Comic Con: The Goon Panel Impressions And Footage

Last year's panel for The Goon, Eric Powell's odd comic book series about two friends who (to grossly over-simplify) live in a city infested by a plague of zombies, was unbridled insanity. This year's panel was a lot more restrained, despite the presence of returning moderator Ben Garant.

This year it was all about the movie that is in development based on The Goon, so things were a little more restrained. Producer David Fincher was in the house, and while the panel wasn't all business (by a long shot) it definitely focused more on what the movie might be and how it could get made than anything else.

The big news out of the panel is that Tim Miller and Jeff Fowler, both of animation house Blur Studios, would co-direct the film if it does get to go forward. At this point the movie is still in development and the teaser shown to the panel audience (and embedded below) is basically the reel that Fincher, Blur & Co. are taking to studios in order to raise funds for the movie.

Yes, Clancy Brown is still the voice of the Goon, though he wasn't on hand. Paul Giamatti was there, and one of the best revelations is that before he was hired, while Blur was considering him as a great choice to voice Frankie, a sound editor built part of a test clip with sampled dialogue from Giamatti's role in Cinderella Man. That's fantastic — it's also the clip that Giamatti first saw. So he was brought on to the project by hearing his own voice already playing the character! (At least I think that's a true story — hard to tell with these guys sometimes.)

The film would be PG-13, but really doesn't sound as if it would be hampered by that. Fincher said "You could so easily fuck this up by allowing someone to sanitize it and turn it into Pixar lite," and all of his comments were to the effect of: I like this book, which is why I'm producing it, and I want it to hit the screen. What can't be in the film? "No sodomy between siblings," said Fincher.

"Pretty much all of the main characters are there," says Powell. "Goon, Frankie, Buzzard, all the guys in the bar, Zombie Priest, all of his entourage...Peaches." He actually said that he's really jammed a lot of characters into the script, though there are a few things he held back for a possible sequel.

Check out the teaser trailer below:

And here's a brief clip that shows a taste of the whole panel, with David Fincher on the left, then (from l to r) Paul Giamatti, comic creator Eric Powell, Blur studios guys (and planned co-directors) Tim Miller and Jeff Fowler, and Ben Garant. Sorry the audio is a little low — shot this on my phone, but wanted to grab a  bit of the discussion.