‘The Goblin’ – A24 Making Raunchy Practical Creature Movie Described as ‘Ted Meets E.T.’

A hot script going around Hollywood titled The Goblin has been picked up A24, Deadline reports, with David Mikalson directing the project that’s being referred to as “Ted meets E.T.”

The Goblin is described as a “raunchy comedy” rather than a horror movie, mind you, but with A24 attached it feels like a project that was worth mentioning here on Bloody Disgusting. It sounds a bit like films including A Gnome Named Gnorm and more recently, Frankie Freako.

It sounds like Mikalson had been working on turning his script into a “micro-budget” movie, but A24 came on board the project and decided to fund a much bigger version of the film.

Deadline details, “After he hatched the idea to make an outrageous buddy comedy about a goblin, using a practical puppet and operating outside the Hollywood system, his script quickly got him a rep team. While others might have eyed the raunchy comedy as a writing sample or planned to wait to see the micro-budget version Mikalson has been directing in Kentucky, A24 jumped all over it. The hot indie essentially has agreed to finance a full feature.”

This looks to be a case of an unproven new talent in Hollywood catching the attention of major studios with a hot viral script, which is something that doesn’t happen all that often these days. Deadline notes in today’s report that A24 could be spending upwards of $6 million on the project, but that would depend on who they cast to voice the titular character.

“There was a lot of interest, but A24 came with what Mikalson really wanted, after spending all his money crafting the puppet title character: they acquired the movie and agreed to let him make it with a significantly increased budget than what he had left after creating the anatomically correct title character,” Deadline details.

Stay tuned for more on A24’s The Goblin as we learn it.