Kevin Smith is 20 pages away from finishing the most current draft of Mallrats 2. The COVID-19 pandemic is taking its tolls on shopping malls and small businesses everywhere, but it gave Kevin Smith time to catch up on a few projects. The Dogma and Chasing Amy director let the news about Mallrats 2 drop while discussing watching movies with old friends, which he will be doing when he streams his 1995 comedy classic Mallrats during a Facebook live watch party on April 20. The party will aid coronavirus pandemic relief efforts.
Non-essential businesses have taken an enormous hit, and his upcoming Mallrats sequel, Twilight of the Mallrats, will reflect that. Smith has spent the lock-down finishing the scripts for Mallrats 2, Clerks 3, and other unrealized projects he's had shelved. The first Mallrats, released in 1995, was a slacker romance comedy with a disgustingly delicious chocolate-covered delivery. If nothing else, the movie highlighted the importance of washing your hands. It told the story of T.S. (Jeremy London) and Brodie (Jason Lee) spending a day in the mall after bad breakups with their girlfriends. They don't just window shop, they compete on a dating show called Truth or Date, meet Marvel Comics' Stan Lee, and relentlessly harass a clothing store manager played by Ben Affleck. Jay and his hetero-life-mate, Silent Bob, reprise their roles from Clerks.
Smith told the Asbury Park Press he is "20 pages away from completion on the screenplay of the latest iteration of a potential Mallrats sequel, Twilight of the Mallrats." The upcoming sequel will deal with the skyrocketing unemployment numbers in America and how the pandemic is hitting the economy. The script is “being reformed, as we speak, by the pandemic, by coronavirus, because clearly this is something that affects us going forward, from now through all time," Smith said. When he first started talking about the Mallrats sequel, he had it tenuously set twenty years after the first film, in a time when the mall was closing down. Mallrats 2 will explore the end of mall culture. "Nobody’s forgetting about this," Smith said. "This isn’t a minor blip in the history of humanity. Everything we do from here on in in the arts that reflects life is going to include this time in our history. It’s not like you can ignore it or something like that."
Even though the screenplay is still in the draft stage, the upcoming sequel caught the attention of actors Bruce Campbell and Michael Rooker, who are confirmed to appear. Campbell and Smith actually hashed out the deal together in a series of Twitter posts. While there is no word on what he will play, the Evil Dead star promises to put his whole chin into the part.
Smith has started various Mallrats follow-up attempts in the past, it's even been in the running for a TV series and almost got rebooted as "Mallbrats." So it's good to see the project isn’t dead. The original film wasn't a smash hit, but it gathered a large cult following and helped Smith move from low-budget independent films to larger works. Hopefully, Mallrats 2 find a similar kind of success and resonates with a new generation of fans.
Source: Asbury Park Press
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