Mike Fleming

Here is one way to get a passion project financed. David Fincher and Blur Studios want to make an animated feature out of the the Eric Powell comic book series The Goon, and they have launched the “Let’s Kickstart This Fuckin’ Film” fundraising campaign. This seems like the kind of thing a studio would be all over, but they haven’t gotten that far since introducing the concept at 2010 Comic-Con and this is in intriguing way to get started, as they describe the plan to raise $400,000 over the next 29 days to generate a story reel that will make the film possible.

Powell wrote the script. Highlander’s Clancy Brown voices The Goon and Paul Giamatti voices his sidekick Franky in a comic that is described as containing “mobsters, zombies, killer robots, giant fish-men, and every outrageous thing in between.” Donors from $25 to up to $10,000 are enticed with everything from T-shirts to limited-edition signed art to private screenings. There is even this pitch from Fincher, who was once very involved in an attempt to do another animated feature based on Heavy Metal magazine: “I admit it — I came to this party late. Chinatown, and the Mystery of Mr. Wicker was — regrettably — my introduction to The Goon and the incredible world created by Eric Powell. I thank Tim Miller — who snapped me out of my Goonless existence when I was looking for material to possibly make into an animated feature, and he suggested I peruse a copy he had (suspiciously) nearby. Of course I marveled at the characters and was smitten with the mise-en-scene, but it was the language — that uncategorizable: Dead End Kids Meets Abbot and Costello Meet the Mummies — that unlikely Powellian patois that absolutely hooked me. If this is your first time, you are in for a treat — if not, you already know how lucky you are.”

Here is the concept trailer they’ve put together for the film: