Whatever Happened to Kevin Smith's 'Mallrats 2' and 'Clerks 3'?
By Courtney Enlow | Trade News | February 15, 2017 | Comments (42)
On this week’s episode of SModcast, Kevin Smith and guest co-host Jason Mewes (Scott Mosier is doing a secret project in France) addressed the elephant that’s just been standing in the room smoking a blunt for a year or whatever: the status of Clerks 3 and Mallrats 2, both of which were announced with great fanfare and both of which just kind of pulled a Snoopy-slinkaway.
Without naming names, Smith tells us that one of the four key players ultimately decided he didn’t want to be part of the third Clerks movie (Jeff Anderson. I’m assumung it’s definitely Jeff Anderson. If Brian O’Halloran is cool doing the clown rape movie, he was cool doing Clerks 3).
“You need those four or else you ain’t got a fuckin’ motion picture. It ain’t Clerks anymore.”
Smith wrote a script and said one of the four parties wasn’t interested. But after some convincing, everyone was on board. They secured $8 million in financing and were set to follow Creed to shoot in Philadelphia, using some of the same crew members from that film. But at that point, it looks like Smith’s attempts to quell the concerns of the unnamed fourth party (Anderson, guys, pretty sure it’s Anderson) were unsuccessful.
“We had our loot, and one of our four players didn’t want to do the movie. So, you know, it fell apart and it fell apart pretty close to the moment where people were starting to leave to go to the east. We were just about to open an office. So it was pretty ugly. Not ugly, but it sucked… I tried to do everything I could. I offered up more, offered to forgo my monies, but there was no way. Humpty could not be put back together again.”
After that unsuccessful effort, Smith then put his focus on Mallrats 2. And as those of us who follow Smith on social media know, he secured most of the cast, save for, to our public knowledge, Ben Affleck. Smith, understandably reticent after what happened with Clerks 3, didn’t want to start writing until he knew it was a done deal.
“I’m not gonna go through what I just went through, where we were gonna make it and then I had no power over whether the movie got made or not.”
His agent presented him with three possibilities: Universal (which still owned the original film, though they didn’t remember that when they were first approached) finances, he co-finances with Universal, or Universal gives up the rights and lets him make it alone. Once written, Smith was told he needed to run the script past Universal for their blessing and to ensure he didn’t besmirch the studio’s good name. But once the studio had the script, there was one glitch.
“Apparently in the history of this company, Universal, they have never released a catalog title…They consider themselves a catalog warehouse and a studio, and they’ve never let go of a single property in the history of Universal. Once they own it, they own it.”
With the only options now being studio financing or a Smith-Universal co-financing, the studio wasn’t interested. Smith took it to Focus Features (part of Universal) and Universal Television to perhaps attempt develop it as a series. (“Everyone is like ‘did you take it to Netflix?!’ Of course we took it to Netflix.”) Everyone passed.
With those projects killed, there remained but one well for Smith to revisit. And that well is filled with snootchies and bootchies.
http://www.pajiba.com/trade_news/whatever-happened-to-kevin-smiths-mallrats-2-and-clerks-3.php
By Courtney Enlow | Trade News | February 15, 2017 | Comments (42)
On this week’s episode of SModcast, Kevin Smith and guest co-host Jason Mewes (Scott Mosier is doing a secret project in France) addressed the elephant that’s just been standing in the room smoking a blunt for a year or whatever: the status of Clerks 3 and Mallrats 2, both of which were announced with great fanfare and both of which just kind of pulled a Snoopy-slinkaway.
Without naming names, Smith tells us that one of the four key players ultimately decided he didn’t want to be part of the third Clerks movie (Jeff Anderson. I’m assumung it’s definitely Jeff Anderson. If Brian O’Halloran is cool doing the clown rape movie, he was cool doing Clerks 3).
“You need those four or else you ain’t got a fuckin’ motion picture. It ain’t Clerks anymore.”
Smith wrote a script and said one of the four parties wasn’t interested. But after some convincing, everyone was on board. They secured $8 million in financing and were set to follow Creed to shoot in Philadelphia, using some of the same crew members from that film. But at that point, it looks like Smith’s attempts to quell the concerns of the unnamed fourth party (Anderson, guys, pretty sure it’s Anderson) were unsuccessful.
“We had our loot, and one of our four players didn’t want to do the movie. So, you know, it fell apart and it fell apart pretty close to the moment where people were starting to leave to go to the east. We were just about to open an office. So it was pretty ugly. Not ugly, but it sucked… I tried to do everything I could. I offered up more, offered to forgo my monies, but there was no way. Humpty could not be put back together again.”
After that unsuccessful effort, Smith then put his focus on Mallrats 2. And as those of us who follow Smith on social media know, he secured most of the cast, save for, to our public knowledge, Ben Affleck. Smith, understandably reticent after what happened with Clerks 3, didn’t want to start writing until he knew it was a done deal.
“I’m not gonna go through what I just went through, where we were gonna make it and then I had no power over whether the movie got made or not.”
His agent presented him with three possibilities: Universal (which still owned the original film, though they didn’t remember that when they were first approached) finances, he co-finances with Universal, or Universal gives up the rights and lets him make it alone. Once written, Smith was told he needed to run the script past Universal for their blessing and to ensure he didn’t besmirch the studio’s good name. But once the studio had the script, there was one glitch.
“Apparently in the history of this company, Universal, they have never released a catalog title…They consider themselves a catalog warehouse and a studio, and they’ve never let go of a single property in the history of Universal. Once they own it, they own it.”
With the only options now being studio financing or a Smith-Universal co-financing, the studio wasn’t interested. Smith took it to Focus Features (part of Universal) and Universal Television to perhaps attempt develop it as a series. (“Everyone is like ‘did you take it to Netflix?!’ Of course we took it to Netflix.”) Everyone passed.
With those projects killed, there remained but one well for Smith to revisit. And that well is filled with snootchies and bootchies.
http://www.pajiba.com/trade_news/whatever-happened-to-kevin-smiths-mallrats-2-and-clerks-3.php
