Goose

Production records on Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck's Captain Marvel place the on-set animal work for Goose under trainer Ursula Brauner of Animals for Hollywood, who selected four orange tabbies from a Los Angeles shelter network rather than from breeder stock. Reggie, the principal performer, handled most of the close-up and held-by-actor scenes opposite Brie Larson and Samuel L. Jackson; Archie, Rizzo, and Gonzo split the remaining work according to which cat tolerated which environment. Brauner has stated in trade interviews that Reggie was unusually motivated by food rewards and required only short rehearsal periods, while Gonzo handled the action-sequence body-double work. The film, released 8 March 2019, grossed approximately 1.13 billion USD worldwide and was the first female-led entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to cross that threshold. The Flerken biology, which the film treats as comic relief, comes directly from Kelly Sue DeConnick and David López's 2014 Captain Marvel run, where Carol Danvers's cat Chewie was revealed to be a member of an alien species capable of laying 117 eggs and storing pocket-dimensional matter behind retractable mouth tentacles. The film changes the name from Chewie (a Star Wars reference) to Goose (a Top Gun reference) to fit the 1995 setting and the air-force backstory written for Danvers by Boden, Fleck, and Geneva Robertson-Dworet. CGI tentacle work for the Flerken transformation scenes was handled by Industrial Light and Magic and Trixter, with reference photography of the live cats used to match fur movement under different lighting. Reggie was reportedly adopted by a member of the production crew after filming wrapped in early 2018, though Marvel has not formally confirmed the placement. Goose returns in Nia DaCosta's The Marvels (2023), where the egg-laying gag pays off with a sequence of dozens of Flerken kittens overrunning the Hala space station.