Will the Ducks fly together ever again? Whether or not a Mighty Ducks 4 ever comes to pass remains to be seen, but from what Adam F. Goldberg -- creator of ABC's 80s-focused comedy The Goldbergs -- says, he pitched a treatment for a sequel to Disney and it sounds like they passed on it faster than a Fulton slap shot.
Writer Adam F. Goldberg did an interview on the Nerdist Podcast earlier this month, and among the topics discussed was his tendency to write sequels to movies and try to make them happen. The Mighty Ducks 4 was one of the movies he's tinkered with.
I came up with a whole - it's like a 20-page treatment, and I've pitched it.
Disney just so happens to be the parent company of ABC, which is where The Goldbergs airs (Wednesday nights between The Middle and Modern Family.) And from what Goldberg says, it sounds like Disney was all about working with the writer on a feature film. However, when his agent brought up the prospect of a Mighty Ducks sequel, they shut him down...
Disney called at one point when The Goldbergs just happened and they were like, "If Adam wants to do a movie, we're in!" And then my agent is like "He has Mighty Ducks 4." And they were like, "We're out!" So, it was like "anything but Mighty Ducks 4!"
The Goldbergs premiered in 2013, and from the way Goldberg phrased this story, it sounds like that was around when his agent pitched the script. It's possible that Disney had something more original in mind than a sequel when they expressed an interest in working with Goldberg, hence the hard pass on a Mighty Ducks sequel. Or it's possible they're simply not (or weren't, at the time) looking to revisit the beloved hockey franchise. From what Joshua Jackson was quoted as saying about a year ago, it doesn't sound like a Mighty Ducks sequel is entirely out of the realm of possibility. But we haven't heard much about the potential for the Ducks to reunite on the big screen in any capacity recently.
Regardless, Adam F. Goldberg does seem to be well suited to pen a script for a Mighty Ducks film, not only because he's proven adept at blending nostalgia, humor and heart in a modern way with The Goldbergs, but there's also a name-connection between the writer and one of the Mighty Ducks characters. And that was never lost on Adam F. Goldberg and his brother Barry:
The movie meant a lot to me, because the goalie on it is named Goldberg, and he wore a Flyers jersey. I was from Philly, and it spoke to me and my brother Barry. We watched it and when we would play hockey together, we would pretend we were the Mighty Ducks. So, the movie meant something.
Sharing a surname and a city with Shaun Weiss' goaltending character does seem to have added a bit more attachment between Goldberg and the film. His comments certainly leave us wondering what's written in that 20-page treatment, that may never see the light of day.
Is there any hope that The Goldbergs will pay tribute to The Mighty Ducks at some point in the future? At present, the series is set firmly in the 1980s, and that doesn't seem to be changing anytime soon. That said, maybe once the kids age up a bit, and/or the ABC comedy has exhausted all of the better 80s pop culture reference, the series could veer into the early 90s and then it's got to be Ducks season, right?
