Goon co-writer/star Jay Baruchel (She's Out of My League) and his script collaborator, Evan Goldberg (Superbad, The Green Hornet), have been looking for a studio to pick up their self-described "anti-sports movie" for around a year - and now, Magnolia Pictures has officially snatched up U.S. rights to the hard-hitting hockey comedy (pun intended).

An international trailer for Goon has been released, painting the film as being an R-Rated laughfest that (for lack of a better description) feels like the lovechild of Happy Gilmore and The Mighty Ducks.

Canadian director Michael Dowse (Take Me Home Tonight, the Fubar movies) sat at the helm of Goon, which is based on Adam Frattasio and Doug Smith's book "Goon: The True Story of an Unlikely Journey into Minor League Hockey" about Smith's real-life experiences.

Here is the official synopsis for the film:

GOON is the story of Doug Glatt (Sean William Scott), a dumb but loveable bar bouncer plucked from obscurity to be the enforcer for a minor league hockey team. In the tradition of great sports comedies like "Slapshot", GOON delivers bone crunching action and laughs in equal measure.

To clarify: "The Goon," in hockey terms, is the player whose job is to protect his teammates from the opposition - even if it means getting caught up in a bloody fist fight.

Bear that in mind while watching the mildly NSFW international Goon trailer below:

You probably noticed many a familiar face in the Goon trailer, including Alison Pill (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World), Liev Schreiber (Wolverine), Kim Coates (Sons of Anarchy), and William's American Pie franchise costar, Eugene Levy. Going off this early footage, that eclectic cast looks to be having fun (or sticking with their tried-and-true comical shtick) in Goon - especially Schreiber, with his thuggish attitude and "evil" Walrustache - which bodes well for the film, despite the somewhat mixed talent working behind the scenes.

There's admittedly not a whole lot in the way of laughs on display here, though that may in part be due to the film having a lot of foul-mouthed humor that cannot be included in the theatrical preview for overseas audiences.

sean william scott goon trailer

Moviegoers have become so familiar with sport film clichés that it seems like even parodies of said genre tropes are now considered kind of overdone and boring. The best underdog sport tales are therefore the ones that either ease back on the melodrama and offer more in the way of complex character conflicts (see: The FighterWarrior) - or simply tell more of a flat-out unconventional story (see: this month's Moneyball).

Sometimes, though, people just want to see a wild and outrageous comedy that also happens to involve an often-violent sport - even if it's one much more popular in, say, Canada than here in the States. That's the crowd that Goon is (partially) hoping to appeal to.

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An official U.S. release date has not been set yet for Goon, but it's expected to reach theaters by early 2012. As always, we'll keep you posted.

Source: Magnet Releasing/Magnolia Pictures