Some interesting news cropped up yesterday morning. The new owners of Miramax struck a deal with the old owners of Miramax, the Weinsteins, to put into production sequels and or potential television offshoots for some of the most high profile titles in the film library. “Bad Santa,” “Rounders” and “Shakespeare in Love” are the first batch to titles to be exhumed but plenty more are waiting in the wings including, “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” “Copland,” “From Dusk Till Dawn,” “Swingers,” “Shall We Dance?,” “The Amityville Horror” and “Clerks.” The news took many by surprise as pretty much no one actually involved with those films knew about any pending spinoffs or sequels until yesterday’s press release. But ever quick to have his voice heard, Kevin Smith responded to questions about a potential third “Clerks.”
“I guess if someone was going to exploit the library for sequels, remakes, tv, I’d rather it be the devil I know. Nice to know there’s a home for ‘Clerks III’ if I ever wanted to make it, but hope it doesn’t become a home for a Clerks-anything if I’m not involved,” Smith tweeted. And that sentiment is one that we’re pretty sure a lot of filmmakers involved with the projects mentioned are feeling.
Smith elaborated even more on his relationship with the Weinsteins and his doubts on how much of a jackpot of sequel/spinoff cash his catalog is really worth. “Either way, I doubt my shit is even something they wanna re-do/remake. They own ‘Clerks’, ‘Chasing Amy’, ‘Jersey Girl’ and ‘Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back’. But then it’s further complicated by the Jay & Silent Bob of it all. They don’t own Jay & Silent Bob; I do. They own ‘Strike Back’, but they can’t make any flick that’d include Jay & Silent Bob (even a ‘Strike Back’ sequel) without my permission/license. The only flick they own free & clear of me with no ties whatsoever, is ‘Jersey Girl’. And from personal experience, there’s little to no interest in a sequel or remake, unless it opens with JLo’s dead Mom busting out of her earthen grave, trampling her only begotten daughter’s copy of a Necronomicon as she eats her brains. If they wanna do THAT ‘Jersey Girl’ sequel, I’m totally in. But honestly, all those flicks are theirs to do with as they will. I can’t (and won’t) complain. At least the Guardians of Ga’Harvey are still in place, looking out for the dopey little (f)art flicks I made so long ago.”
Overall, he doesn’t seem too bummed about it, and it’s kind of refreshing how he’s made his peace with those projects. Then again, he probably knows as the rest of us do, that if the Weinsteins dare try and do anything with any Smith-related projects without consulting him, the View Askew bots will be enraged. No spinoff or sequel without his involvement would really work anyway. At any rate, we’re really curious in a macabre sort of way as to what Miramax and the Weinsteins actually plan to do with these properties. It seems like it has disaster written all over it. [Collider]
smith is annoying but i find it hard not to root for him. i still love the hell out of clerks dogma and yes…mallrats.
The only people who really go see Kevin Smith\’s films (specifically, the Clerks films) are his fans anyway. If they do a sequel without his involvement, I doubt anybody would see it… especially since it\’d just be about Dante and Randall.