David Fincher can’t help but direct. The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo helmsman does what he does best and bosses around a couple of guys from Blur Studio in this Kickstarter campaign video for an animated adaptation of Eric Powell’s very cool comic-book series The Goon. Fincher, who’s teamed up with Powell, Goon publisher Dark Horse Entertainment and Blur directors, Tim Miller and Jeff Fowler, joins those last two men in the clip to attempt to raise $400,000 so that they can produce a finished first reel of the film. And he’s not about to leave the driving to them.
After Miller and Fowler begin their appeal, Fincher bigfoots the two guys and decides that a series of niche spots are the way to go. He then proceeds to sell Powell’s world of zombies, vampires, fish-men and giant squid to Little Orphan Annie fans, liberals (“Put a caring man back in the White House”), conservatives (“Put the right man in the White House”) and arch conservatives (“Put a white man back in the White House”) as well as fans of hip hop, R-rated movies and movie trailers.
Okay, so the humor is pretty lame, but the footage included in the Kickstarter clip (via FirstShowing.net) is beautifully bad-ass and features voice work by Clancy Brown as the Goon and Paul Giamatti as Franky’s swashbuckling pupil-less friend Franky. (Now do you get the Little Orphan Annie reference? ) The airborne car scene with Franky spraying machine-gun fire from the hood of a sweet convertible muscle car is dreamy. [FirstShowing.net]
There’s also this “proof of concept” video. Good stuff.
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To paraphrase Clemenza from The Godfather: Move the picture. Keep the scene.
Deadline Hollywood reported that Warner Bros. has decided to push the release date of Gangster Squad to January 11, 2013.
The schedule shuffle took place as a result of the tragic mass shooting at a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colo.
As you’re probably well aware by now, there’s a pivotal scene in the Ruben Fleischer-directed movie in which mobsters burst through a movie screen to spray a crowd of movie goers with machine-gun fire.
Warner, which is part of a public company, is understandably postponing the release date to avoid appearing insensitive to the Colorado tragedy, especially given the eerie similarity between the Gangster Squad scene and what happened in Aurora.
It’s a smart move, and now that the studio is putting some distance between Aurora and Gangster Squad, I think it should give serious consideration to leaving the theater scene intact. (As Deadline reported, plans are to substitute another murder spree that takes place in a different setting.)
As others have pointed out, Fleischman’s movie was completed before the shooting in Aurora took place. (The studio was already reportedly screening the film.) Admittedly, it’s a sensitive and unfortunate situation. — but it’s a situation that should be solved with the passage of time, not the alteration of a filmmaker’s work.
Consider the point made by one Movieline reader when I wrote on Tuesday that the movie’s release would probably be delayed until next year. In the comments section, the reader, who goes by the handle “Elkabong,” noted that “Around 300 Americans were killed in automobiles last month,” adding: ”I assume that Warner is going to cut out any future scenes which involve people driving cars.”
A Warner…
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