8 reasons why we're excited about the Goonies sequel
The internet lost its collective mind over the weekend with the news that there's a sequel to 'The Goonies' in the pipeline - and 28 years after they first went looking for One Eyed Willy's treasure, the original cast are hopefully on board.
A follow-up to the 1985 family adventure has been mooted for donkeys' years - but director Richard Donner was emphatic that it was going to happen when papped signing autographs in L.A. on Saturday.
"Hopefully, all of them," Donner told TMZ when asked if the original cast were up for one more treasure hunt.
The Goonies sequel confirmed by director Richard Donner.
Now for anyone lucky enough to have been a kid when the original came out, this is truly epic news.
Here are our reasons why 'The Goonies' is the best kids' film ever - if not the actual pinnacle of celluloid achievement since the Lumière brothers patented the cinematograph.
If you were aged 7-12 at the time, incalculably so.
Ok this maybe goes without saying - but if you were an impressionable youngster when The Goonies first hit your screen it left an indelible mark.
The motley crue of cast members meant that there was somebody with whom everyone could identify - the geeky kid (Data), the jock (Brand), the babe (Andy), the fat one (Chunk) and of course, the everyman hero (Mikey).
And what kid wouldn't dream of being plucked from the humdrum of everyday life and transported to a world of treasure maps, pirate ships, villians and snogging?
Watch the original trailer below, and revisit the Goonies in all their glory.
Well, some of them more than others if we are to be brutally honest.
The cast are fertile ground for those evergreen 'where are they now' pieces. While some of them went on to Hollywood stardom (Sean Astin), others lost their way a little bit when trying to make the transition from child stardom. Yes, we are looking at you, Corey Feldman.
Meanwhile, some of them - Sloth and Mama Fratelli, most notably - are no longer with us.
Still, there are enough of them left to make a reunion a realistic prospect - the question remains, however, as to whether it's a desirable one.
Chunk had many, many great moments in The Goonies - but the best of them has to be The Truffle Shuffle (although Cinema Puke Prank runs it a close second).
Apropos of Chunk - actor Jeff Cohen is one of the ones who did alright after the film. The weight fell off once he hit high school, he made student body president at Berkely ('ran on the Chunk ticket', apparently) and he's now a successful entertainment lawyer in Hollywood with his own firm.
So now.
Yes, that is a young Josh Brolin (No Country for Old Men, True Grit) as Mikey's older brother Brand.
It was young Josh's first-ever big screen role.
Here he is (far right) with some of the rest of the cast in 1991, as they gathered to record the DVD commentary for the movie. We fancy the pants off Martha Plimpton in this picture, not that that has anything to do with anything.
Did you know that Sloth's first name was Lotney? We didn't even know that was a name.
Sloth was played by 6'8" former NFL star John Matuszak, also known as 'Tooz'.
Tooz played defense for the Oakland Raiders for years before going into the movies after retirement.
He also posed for Playgirl in 1982.
Matuszak died from an overdose of prescription drugs in 1989. He was 38.
We love this bit.
For the final scenes of the film aboard One Eyed Willy's ship, executive producer Steven Spielberg ordered the construction of a real, floating ship - not a set.
The ship - the Inferno - was 105 feet long and took two and a half months to build. The sails also required more than than 7,000 square feet of material.
According to set lore, none of the kids were allowed a glimpse the ship until the actual scene after the waterslide, as Donner and Spielberg wanted their reactions on first seeing it to be genuine.
Unfortunately the were a little genuine and the chorus of 'holy s***' from the cast couldn't be used in the final cut.
After the film, the Inferno was offered for free to anyone who would take it. No one wanted it, so the ship was scrapped.
The film was shot in Astoria, Oregon, a small and foggy town in the Pacific Northwest of America.
You may not have heard of it, but Astoria is a bit of a 1980s movie hotbed - other flicks filmed here include 'Short Circuit', 'Kindergarten Cop', 'Free Willy', 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III' and 'Into the Wild', and also features in the finale of 'Dexter'.
The Goonies took their name from the (fictional) 'Goon Docks' area of Astoria, where Mikey and Brandon's house was.
The house still stands today.
Mama Fratelli gets her just desserts in one of cinema's best-ever comeuppance scenes.
More Goonies trivia at IMDB.com
