Director Panos Cosmatos has scored an instant cult hit with Mandy, an ultra-metal revenge thriller set in the early '80s that stars Nicolas Cage in vintage gonzo Cage mode. It's a movie filled with surprises, but perhaps the biggest of them is the adorable, hard-puking ad mascot called Cheddar Goblin. He appears in a real-seeming TV commercial for a fictional macaroni-and-cheese brand that Cage's lumberjack, Red Miller, watches after a particularly traumatic experience, and now the little green character has taken on a real-world life of his own, complete with a Twitter account and must-have merch.
To find out much, much more about this phenomenon, Thrillist talked with Cosmatos, special-effects guru Shane Morton, and Too Many Cooks creator Casper Kelly, who was brought in to direct the Cheddar Goblin commercial.