06/07/2026
Happy Goonies Day! 🏴☠️
The Goonies premiered. June 07, #1985 American adventure comedy film directed by Richard Donner from a screenplay by Chris Columbus based on a story by Steven Spielberg. The film stars Sean Astin, Josh Brolin, Jeff Cohen, Corey Feldman, Kerri Green, Martha Plimpton and Ke Huy Quan with John Matuszak, Robert Davi, Joe Pantoliano and Anne Ramsey in supporting roles. In the film, a group of children who live in the "Goon Docks" neighborhood of Astoria, Oregon attempt to save their homes from foreclosure. In doing so, they discover an old treasure map which takes them on an adventure to unearth the long-lost fortune of One-Eyed W***y, a legendary 17th-century pirate, while being pursued by a family of criminals who are after the treasure as well.
Principal photography on The Goonies began on October 22, 1984, and lasted five months. An additional six weeks of audio dubbing and recording were used. The shooting script was lengthy, at more than 120 pages, to which several sequences were eventually cut from the final theatrical version. During the film's dénouement, mention is made of an octopus, which refers to a scene that was excised from the final cut.
In the documentary The Making of The Goonies, Richard Donner noted both the difficulties and pleasures of working with so many child actors. He praised them for their energy and excitement, but said that they were also unruly when brought together. As a result, the documentary frequently showed him coaching the actors and revealing some techniques he used to create realistic performances. One of these tricks involved One-Eyed W***y's pirate ship, which was actually a full-sized replica of a pirate ship created under the direction of production designer J. Michael Riva. Donner restricted the actors from seeing the ship until they filmed the scene wherein it is revealed to their characters; the characters' first glimpse of the ship was also the actors' first view of it, bringing about a more realistic performance. However, that particular scene in the final cut was actually the second take, due to the cast feeling so overwhelmed at first sight that the scene had to be reshot. The entire set was scrapped after shooting because they could not find anyone who wanted it. Donner said that the Truffle Shuffle scene was "painful" to film as Cohen was getting mocked for weight and the humor was from pain.
In his book There and Back Again, Sean Astin claimed that Donner and Spielberg were "like co-directors" on the film as he compared and contrasted their styles when directing scenes.
Some of the on-location filming was done in Astoria. The interior and exterior of the old Clatsop County Jail features as the holding place of Jake Fratelli at the start of the film. (The building was later converted into the Oregon Film Museum, which opened on the 25th anniversary of The Goonies with memorabilia from this and other local films.) The museum where Mikey's father works is, in reality, the Captain George Flavel House Museum. The Walsh family home is a real home on the eastern end of the town, at 368 38th Street. The road leading to the home was closed to tours in 2015. The scenes along the coast were filmed in Oregon, but they were a considerable distance from Astoria. The Goonies bicycle to Ecola State Park (in reality, in Cannon Beach, over 26 miles (42 km) south of Astoria) and then find the starting location of the map using Haystack Rock as a guide. Underground scenes were filmed at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California, including the cavernous set where the Goonies find One-Eyed W***y's ship, which was in Stage 16, one of the largest sound stages in the United States. The final scene was shot at Goat Rock State Beach in Sonoma County, California.
The film also marked Wes Takahashi's first major motion picture as an animation supervisor for Industrial Light & Magic.
The film was produced by Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment and released by Warner Bros. Pictures theatrically, in the United States. The film grossed $65 million worldwide on a budget of $19 million. Critics reviewed the film positively and it has since become a cult film. In 2017, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
On February 14, 2025, a sequel was confirmed to be in the works with Potsy Ponciroli writing the script along with Steven Spielberg and Chris Columbus producing
