A while back Jay Baruchel talked about his desire to do nothing but direct horror films, but it looks as if, for the time being, he's staying in the hockey business. Taking to Twitter yesterday, Baruchel revealed that he's actively working on a sequel to this year's **Goon.
Baruchel co-wrote the first film with Evan Goldberg, as well as co-starring, but says he's working on the second with Jesse Chabot (who was associate producer last time). "Evan will be involved as producer and Michael Dowse is directing [again]," tweets Jay, "and we will all be working our asses off to make as awesome a flick as possible."
You wouldn't quite call it a sleeper hit - its total US gross at the box office seems to be about $6m - but Goon picked up pretty positive word-of-mouth. Its Rotten Tomatoes score currently stands at 83% fresh, and what impressed most people was the surprisingly low-key and touching performance of Seann William Scott as hockey enforcer Doug "The Thug" Glatt.
Where could a sequel go though, given that (spoiler) Glatt got the girl and reached the playoffs last time? The real Doug, Doug Smith, whose memoirs Goon was based on, continued to play for various minor league teams to varying levels of success, and away from the rink, also became a cop. So maybe there's something there.
But whatever Baruchel and co. are cooking up, he says, "Goon is pretty close to sacred for all of us involved, and we wouldn't be entertaining the idea of continuing the saga if we weren't all equally convinced that Doug, LaFlamme, Stevesy, the Russians, Rolie, Ogilvy, Belchy and Eva were only just getting started. We will give them and you guys the epic, violent, heartfelt awesomeness that is not just deserved but required. High. Land. Ers!"
Goon 2 won't be alone in the hockey movie stakes: Kevin Smith's epic Hit Somebody is still percolating, and Rob Zombie is prepping his **Broad Street Bullies. But maybe Baruchel will at least benefit from having been first onto the ice. There's no start date yet, but the screenplay, we guess, is being written right now.