David Mikalson A24 Deal To Turn His ‘The Goblin’ Script Into A Movie

EXCLUSIVE: Aspiring writer/director David Mikalson has made a deal with A24 to direct The Goblin, a script he wrote that spread like wildfire around Hollywood. 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. I’ve heard the outlay might be upwards of $6 million, but that will depend on the actor they get to voice the title character.

The script is described as Ted meets E.T.   

I’ve been writing about Hollywood deals long enough to remember the days when everyone in Hollywood got out of bed with a puncher’s chance to make their mark quickly. It has been a tough few years for the movie business, but maybe a strong summer has given executives back some courage to look beyond the obvious and take chances on wildly original scripts like Being John Malkovich, Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, and Everything Everywhere All At Once, scripts that, like The Goblin, made the rounds and delighted the executive crowd.  

Mikalson truly came out of nowhere; he’s a native of Washington State who dropped out of film school and started making short films. 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. WME, Kaplan/Perrone and attorney Chris Abramson signed him, and they sent his script everywhere.

The Goblin went viral, and now Mikalson is where young filmmakers dream of being, making his film at A24. This after Mikalson went on over 100 general meetings ranging from creative executives to studio heads. 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.