Kevin Smith Talks Dogma Rebirth, New Jay and Silent Bob Film

Kevin Smith has always been nostalgic, but those sentimental feelings only deepened after he suffered a nearly fatal widowmaker in early 2018. Since then, he’s made a concerted effort to revisit the five pillars of his early filmography on the big screen: Clerks (1994), Mallrats (1995) Chasing Amy (1997), Dogma (1999) and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001). Dubbed the “View Askewniverse,” his characters have appeared in various other mediums over the years, but 2006’s Clerks II was the only live-action sequel for well over a decade.

That changed in 2019 when the Jersey native released Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, the long-awaited sequel to Strike Back. The film not only included Ben Affleck’s reprisal of his Chasing Amy character, Holden McNeil, but it also rekindled his friendship with Smith after a decade of distance. Clerks III, which took inspiration from said heart attack, then followed a few years later in 2022. However, throughout the last decade-plus, Smith’s attempts to revive Mallrats and Dogma have repeatedly been rebuffed. He still had Jason Lee’s beloved Mallrats character, Brodie Bruce, return in Reboot, as well as Matt Damon’s Loki from Dogma, but proper follow-ups have hit an assortment of snags.

In the broadest of terms, Dogma is a religious satire about a group of characters who are literally or figuratively stuck in limbo. Affleck and Damon’s fallen angels of Bartleby and Loki can’t enter, let alone enjoy, the afterlife, and it’s a fate that Smith’s second-highest-grossing movie has also had to bear. Outside of a few scattered home video releases in the 2000s, the controversial fantasy comedy has largely been unobtainable on physical media. Moreover, it’s been completely absent on streaming and digital platforms. Such disregard shouldn’t happen to a film that boasts a star-studded ensemble of Affleck, Damon, Linda Fiorentino, Alan Rickman, Salma Hayek, Chris Rock, Lee, Alanis Morissette and George Carlin.

The film’s lack of post-theatrical life can be attributed to the tangled web of Harvey Weinstein. In 2008, after seven films together, Smith’s relationship with the former Miramax/Weinstein Company principal became frayed, and they went their separate ways. He eventually wrote letters to resuscitate Dogma, but they fell on deaf ears until October 2017. That’s when Smith says he received a call from Weinstein out of the blue. At long last, he was finally expressing interest in Dogma, be it as a sequel or follow-up streaming series, and they planned to talk again the following week. But then the landmark New York Times exposé about Weinstein rocked the world a few days later. Jonathan Gordon, Smith’s friend and former Miramax exec, convinced him that Weinstein’s Dogma phone call was just a pretext to gauge whether Smith himself was a source for the Times article that chronicled decades of sexual misconduct.

In 2019, as Weinstein’s legal problems were escalating, Smith decided to take a run at acquiring Dogma, but his separate offers of $250K and $500K were both rejected. He recruited some outside help to the tune of $1 million, but that overture was also declined. The Samuel Goldwyn Company proceeded to take a crack at it for $5 million, but a future profit sharing clause with Weinstein became a dealbreaker for Smith. Then, in a divinely unexpected way, Smith received correspondence from an independent producer named Alessandra Williams. She represented a Dubai company that purchased a collection of films from Weinstein’s fire-sale, including Dogma. 

Williams, who grew up in the same neck of the woods as Smith, soon became the “guardian angel” of the picture, having fallen in love with it as a kid. With Smith now in the fold, she led the charge in order to belatedly celebrate Dogma’s 25th anniversary. She helped broker a deal with AMC Theatres for April and May’s Dogma: The Resurrection Tour — a 20-city event featuring Smith’s signature post-screening Q&A. If that wasn’t enough, she also arranged a wide theatrical rerelease in North America a month later. Additionally, Dogma‘s physical media problem has now been solved with its first 4K Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate. But perhaps the crown jewel of Smith’s Dogma anniversary experience came courtesy of Williams’ decision to resubmit the film to the Cannes Film Festival where it first premiered in May of 1999. Williams’ added persistence paid off as the film returned to France this past May as part of the Cannes Classics program, receiving a 7-minute standing ovation. 

“I got up on stage and told everybody, ‘I really thought I was done with the film festival aspect of my career. So I’m here to say that I’m going to write a sequel to Dogma, and I’m going to come back to show it here,’” Smith tells The Hollywood Reporter in support of Dogma’s new 4K. “The audience all applauded, and right next to me, [fest director] Thierry Frémaux said, ‘If it is good.’”

Elsewhere in the View Askewniverse, Smith was on the verge of beginning production on a third Jay and Silent Bob film earlier this year, but the trade war between the United States government and Canada cost the stoner comedy its financing. Jay and Silent Bob: Store Wars is now expected to shoot elsewhere in 2026. 

“We had Canadian money, and the Canadian money went away. It was just as people were getting aggressive with our friends up north,” Smith shares. “I was more down on myself for the movie falling apart. I was like, ‘Well, this is your fault. You should have been more successful. If you’d been better at your job, then you could fucking pay for your own art, and you wouldn’t have to go hat in hand to somebody else.’ So I can’t bitch.”

Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Smith also discusses how the one-two punch of Chasing Amy and Good Will Hunting got Dogma green-lit, before elaborating on the circumstances working against Mallrats 2.

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Dogma predates Clerks in some respects, but you kept it in your back pocket until after your third film, Chasing Amy. What was your rationale behind the timing of it all? 

It wasn’t that I kept it in my back pocket as much as, “Who’s going to give me money to make it after Clerks?” Clerks cost $27,575, and Dogma was going to be a damn site more. So the next movie I wound up making was Mallrats at Universal, but that was built to be more mainstream. So finding somebody who was willing to make Dogma in the first place was always going to be an uphill battle. And in the wake of Mallrats dying on the vine and only making $2 million — a million dollars less than Clerks had made — suddenly nobody was wondering, “Hey, what’s next?” 

Mercifully, [then-producing partner] Scott Mosier and I had signed a deal with Miramax. Our friend [Miramax exec] Jon Gordon brought us in and said, “Why are you making movies at Universal? We did Clerks, and you should make your home here.” So we set up our overall deal at Miramax, our shingle, if you will, right before Mallrats came out. And thank the Lord we had a home, because Universal had no interest in doing anything with us after Mallrats died.

I then wrote Chasing Amy as the Hail Mary. Clerks was praised, and everyone shit in Mallrats’ mouth, so Chasing Amy was an effort to stay relevant. Originally, Chasing Amy was conceived as what it became. But while we were making Mallrats, we all went to see Clueless, and our producer Jim Jacks said, “You should do that lesbian movie you’re talking about, but you should do it in high school like they did for Clueless.” So I started writing a version of Chasing Amy that was set in high school, but after Mallrats died, I decided that I was just going to do it the way I first wanted to do it. Chasing Amy ended up being insanely well received, although, nowadays, it’s a bit more difficult for some folks. But back then, it was hailed as very progressive, particularly in the wake of Mallrats. It was like,”Now this is the guy who made Clerks.” 

So Chasing Amy opened up the door of discussion for the next movie, and I wanted to make Dogma, which, in 1997-98, was the ideal Miramax movie in many ways. It was going to generate publicity without having to pay for it. Miramax liked to skate towards the edge and do things that were not very studio oriented, so Dogma fit right into that niche. It just felt like a Miramax movie, for heaven’s sake. 

Besides Chasing Amy’s reception, there was another film that helped your Dogma crusade.

Yeah, Scott Mosier and I brought Good Will Hunting to Miramax. Castle Rock gave Ben and Matt a little window [during turnaround] to take it out into the world, and they were like, “Can you get it into Miramax?” And I was like, “We’ll try, man. Let me read it.” So they FedExed it to me, and I sat down on the toilet and didn’t leave until I was done reading it. I came out of the bathroom crying, and Scott Mosier was like, “That was a hell of a shit.” And I said, “Ben and Matt fucking wrote a script that, no bullshit, could probably win an Academy Award.” And he said, “No.” And I said, “I swear. It’s fucking good. Read it, man. It’s a grown-up movie and shit.” 

So we brought it into Miramax, and they wound up buying it. It was expensive. Ben and Matt had sold it for $600K to Castle Rock, and with turnaround costs, Miramax had to pay a million, something they’d never paid for a script. But they loved the script, and they fucking picked it up. So between Chasing Amy’s release in April of ‘97 and Good Will Hunting’s release in December of ‘97, that one-two punch made Dogma almost a done deal. 

The budget also increased after Chasing Amy and Good Will Hunting. When we were meeting about it at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival, the budget was going to be $3 million, but by the time we went in front of cameras, Ben and Matt had become [Oscar-nominated] Ben and Matt. They won the [original screenplay] Oscar while we were shooting the movie. So we were able to get that budget up to more of a respectable $10 million. In retrospect, Dogma probably should have had a $15 million to $20 million budget, but we worked it all out.

So it wasn’t a matter of me keeping Dogma in my back pocket. Nobody was going to make that shit, and while I had enough juice at that point, I also had two 800-pound gorillas by the name of Ben and Matt who wanted to be in the movie. Honestly, they deserve more credit than anything else. At the end of the day, if it was just me going, “I want to make this movie,” I could have been distracted, dissuaded or been given a flat-out no. But because I had these two dudes who were emerging and were [in contention to win] an Academy Award, we got the green light to go ahead.

I hate to bring up a sore subject, but after Matt and Ben won their Good Will Hunting screenplay Oscar in March of 1998, they both regretted not thanking you in their speech as promised. 

This interview is over! I’m going to go cry. I already went to the nuthouse three years ago for trauma; I don’t need any more of this shit.

(Laughs.) You just said Dogma was already off and running, but I did wonder at first whether their commitment was partially a way to make amends for that Oscar speech omission.

Oh God, no. Joey [Lauren Adams] and I were dating, and I went to see her in Tampa as she was working on a show called Second Noah. And while she was shooting at night, I’d be writing in the hotel room. I knew I was writing Chasing Amy for Ben, Jason [Lee] and Joey, but I never told anyone but Joey. So I was like, “I should ask Ben, man, just in case he doesn’t want to do it.” 

I then called him from Tampa and said, “I’m in Tampa hanging out with Joey, man. She’s making this TV show, and I’m writing this flick that she’s going to be in.” And he was like, “You better write a flick for her, or she’s going to dump your ass.” I then said, “Well, I’m also writing the flick for you.” And he said, “What do you mean?” And I said, “I want you to play the lead in this movie I’m writing. You’re charming, and you can totally pull off playing a leading man instead of a dude who beats people up.” And then he got all quiet for a beat until he said, “Finally. Thank you for recognizing it. Yeah, I would love to do that, man. When can I read it?” And I said, “Well, I’m heading home tomorrow. Why don’t you come to Jersey from Boston to pick up the pages.” Otherwise, I was going to have to fax him 60 pages, so he was like, “Alright.” 

So after I got home from Tampa, he trained up, and we hung out for the day around Red Bank. He got to see the Quick Stop [from Clerks] and the comic bookstore [that I later bought]. When it was time for him to leave, I gave him the 60 pages of Chasing Amy, and he was like, “You going to drive me home?” And I was like, “No, I’m not going to drive you home. Get back on the train, man. It leaves right out of Red Bank.” And he said, “Come on, man. It’s a five-hour train ride.” And I was like, “You’ve got that script to read.” And he said, “60 pages aren’t going to last long. What else you got?” And I said, “Did you ever read Dogma?” And he said, “What’s that?” And I said, “Dogma is a script that I wrote before Clerks. It’s one that I want to do someday.” And he said, “Let me read it.” 

So he called later that night when he got home, and I was like, “What’d you think of Chasing Amy? And he said, “Guy falls in love with a lesbian. Real cute. But that Dogma script, man, that’s dope. That’s pimp. Bartleby, dude. I want to play Bartleby.”  He really wanted to play Bartleby in a big bad way. And I was like, “Look, that’d be nice, but it’s going to require famous people to get that movie made. So you’re going to have to get real famous.” 

Eventually, on the first day that we were shooting Dogma with Ben and Matt, Matt talks to Betty Aberlin’s nun in the airport, and then we were on Ben’s single shot before Matt jumps over the seat to join him in a two shot. Ben then waved me over to him, and I said, “What?” And he said, “Movie star.” And I was like, “Yes, yes, you are now.” 

According to the internet, Gwyneth Paltrow is somewhere in the background of that airport scene, but I couldn’t find her with a fine-tooth comb. What’s the truth?

(Smith ponders for a moment.) The math works because [she and Ben] were a thing then, but I have a hard time getting my head around the fact that Gwyneth went to Pittsburgh. I went out to lunch with them at the Time Cafe in Manhattan, and that seemed to make sense. But I just can’t imagine she would’ve dipped into Pittsburgh, circa 1998. There was nothing there for her — and I love Pittsburgh. I’ve shot two movies there, but Lady Goop doesn’t seem like a Pittsburgh kind of person to me. She did a voice in the Clerks cartoon, and we worked on that in 1999, 2000. I just can’t say for sure if she was on the Dogma set, but she was definitely not in the background of a shot.

How did Matt enter the fray? 

Once Ben wanted to play Bartleby, I was like, “Alright, Jason Lee will play Loki.” But Jason Lee got offered a movie called American Cuisine over in France. He was going to get to learn French and play a chef. But it was right around the time we were going to shoot Dogma, and Lee was like, “I want to go do the French movie. Can you wait?” And I was like, “No, we can’t wait, man. You’ve got to pick me or the French movie.” He picked the French movie. 

When he got done, we hadn’t started shooting yet because our start got delayed. So he was like, “Can I still be in Dogma?” And I said, “Well, we already cast your part. Ben gave it to his buddy, Matt, and Matt wants to do it.” And Lee said, “Well, is there anything left?” And I said, “There’s the bad guy, Azrael, and while we’re out to Alec Baldwin, I don’t think he’s going to say yes.” So Lee was like, “I’ll do it.”

It would’ve been one thing if we had Ben Affleck, post-Good Will Hunting and Chasing Amy, but we also had Ben and fucking Matt. We had Good Will himself in their next feature, and they both got scale. Nobody got paid on Dogma. This is THR, but for those who don’t know, scale is the minimum wage of the movie business. 

Given the momentum Ben and Matt had, their agent must’ve been beside himself. 

[Their agent] Patrick Whitesell, for a long time, hated my fucking guts. Ben told me that at one point. He said, “Dude, Patrick hates you.” And I said, “Why? I’m always putting you in movies.” And Ben said, “You are always putting me in movies where I don’t make a dime. So of course my agent doesn’t like you.” Alan Rickman gave a Snape-worthy performance that Warner Bros. would later pay a lot of money for, but he also gave us that performance for minimum wage. 

Only one person got paid over-scale. In the wake of Pulp Fiction, we wanted Sam Jackson for Rufus, and so we went out to him. It’s so weird talking about them now because I went to Guillermo del Toro’s screening of Frankenstein the other night, and I saw Sam Jackson and Don Cheadle there. Around the time of Dogma’s casting, I went out to lunch with Don Cheadle at Jerry’s Famous Deli. He was coming off of Devil in a Blue Dress and Boogie Nights, and he loved the Dogma script. So I was like, “I’m down with you, but we’re out to Sam Jackson right now,” only Sam wasn’t responding. It was taking a minute. 

In that interim, we also heard that Chris Rock wanted to meet with me and Scott. This was after Roll with the New when Chris Rock was emerging as the next George Carlin. I’ve been following his career since I’m Gonna Git You Sucker and SNL, so he’d taken this big jump and become the thinking man’s comedian. So he, too, was like, “I love this movie, man. I want to be in it.” And we were like, “That would be amazing, alright.” So we told Miramax, “Chris Rock wants to be in it,” and they’re like, “Chris Rock? Alright, let’s do it.” So they made him an offer. 

I then learned you can’t make an offer to an actor and then offer the same part to another actor without first telling the first actor that the part is no longer open to them. So, because we didn’t do that, Miramax had to pay Sam Jackson for that violation. They were in tight with Sam from Pulp Fiction and whatnot, so Sam Jackson got paid more to not be in Dogma than anybody who got paid to be in Dogma.

When Matt cracks up during the “Run’s House” moment outside the bus, did he break character? Or was that a choice?

I think that’s a purposeful choice. It’s not like he can’t ever break character and laugh, but Matt is like Alan Rickman when it comes to acting. He treats that shit crazy seriously. It’s his fucking craft. He has always treated it the most seriously of anybody I’ve ever worked with other than Alan. The “Run’s House” line was in the script, but my favorite aspect of that is as they’re walking down the street. I don’t think we ever paid for this because it’s so faint, but Matt breaks into the chorus of the Martin theme song. That was Matt just being Matt, and it’s adorable. Ben is absolutely fucking hysterical, but Matt is a legit funny guy. 

There’s a scene on the train where we’re over Matt’s shoulder, and he’s talking to Jay and Bob until he looks over his shoulder to see the Apostle. We did eight takes of that over Matt’s shoulder, and it still charms me to this day. We’d call action, and he would just ad-lib a line in as if we were having a conversation before he turned to face the camera. And it was always a line about Star Wars. In his estimation, we’d be sitting there talking about Star Wars because it was a Kevin Smith movie. And one of my favorite ad-libbed lines is not in the movie, but I hope I can get him to say it in another flick one day. He’s facing Jay and Bob, and Matt, as Loki, goes, “Here [referring to a lightsaber], it’s shaped like a dick, and your father left it for you in the desert years ago. Take it from me, a stranger.” It was just so fucking funny, man. His breakdown of Star Wars take after take rivaled my own at the time.

Is it true that Jason Mewes became so worried about upsetting Alan Rickman that he memorized the entire Dogma script? 

Yes, he was so scared. The part of Jay is based on things that Jay has said and done in real life, but I still would have to spend a month teaching Jay how to be Jay on camera. There was a lot of handholding on Clerks. I had to work him like a puppet; I practically had my hand up his ass. On Mallrats, he was terrified of acting in front of more people, and I was like, “They are the crew. We’re in a mall. You would walk through the mall with your pants down back in Jersey. Now you’re getting paid for it. Come on.” 

But going into Dogma, I was like, “Hey, man, you’ve got to be excellent this time around because we’ve got real actors in the movie.” And he was like, “Who? Affleck?” And I was like, “We’ve got Alan Rickman.” And he said, “Who’s that?”And  I was like, “He’s the dude from Die Hard.” And he went, “Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!” And I was like, “No, that’s Bruce Willis. I’m talking about the bad guy.” And he went, “So what?” And I was like, “Well, Alan Rickman is British, and the Brits invented acting, so he ain’t going to stand for any of your snoochie-boochies nonsense, man. He’s going to tear you apart with a look, so you’ve got to come prepared. You’ve got to know all your lines.” And he was like, “Shut up.” 

On the first day we sat down to rehearse, I was like, “Where’s your script?” And Jay said, “I don’t need it.” And I said, “Bullshit.” And he went, “Try me.” So I read the first scene with Bethany, as Bethany, and he knew all his lines without a script in front of him. I then went to another scene and another scene at the end, and he still knew all his lines. And I was like, “Wow, look at you. You memorized all your fucking lines. I’m impressed.” And he was like, “No, I memorized the whole script. Everybody’s lines.” And I was like, “Bullshit.” And he again said, “Try me.” I then did lines from Ben and Chris, and he responded with the next lines. And I was like, “Who are you, Rain Man? Why would you memorize the entire fucking script?” And he was just like, “I don’t want to piss off that Rickman dude.” 

So he met Alan at the first rehearsal, and afterwards, I went back to the suite we shared. 30 seconds later, Jay opens the door in a huff and slams it. And he said, “That guy is a fucking pussy, man. Why did you scare me?” And I was like, “I didn’t say he was going to beat you up. He’s just  a really good actor.” But they became super tight, and Rickman absolutely loved Jason.

I just spoke to MCU Spider-Man director Jon Watts about a German 4K release of his first movie, Clown, which Dimension shelved domestically in 2014. Surprisingly, he said that he never had a tug of war with the Weinsteins over the final cut. Did you experience any post-production meddling on Dogma?

No, but we got Jedi mind-tricked into shortening the movie. Harvey was known as Harvey Scissorhands back in those days, and he was legendary for taking movies away from filmmakers. He would have his editor do a cut of the movie, and then he would present the filmmaker with a shortened version of their movie that he liked better. The first cut of Clerks that we took to market was ten minutes longer, and after Miramax bought it, the note that Harvey gave us directly was: “I’m an old man, and this is a young man’s movie. So I wouldn’t know what to cut, just lose ten minutes.” So we were mostly left to our own devices. Chasing Amy was a tighter movie anyway, but they were like, “You might want to lose this, this and this.”

With Dogma, I brought in a three-hour cut in the beginning, and I was like, “This is the movie, man.” And rather than be like, “No, it’s not,” the approach was: “The movie is wonderful. It just feels like there’s about ten minutes you could take out to tighten it up.” And Mosier and I were like, “Ten minutes? That’s easy.” Then we would bring in the next cut, and they’d be like, “Wow, it’s incredible how good this is. Now that we found those ten minutes, maybe there’s ten more minutes.” They did that for eight months, and we never really thought about it or noticed until we got to the two-hour mark. That’s when they were like, “This is the best the movie has ever been, but it still feels like there’s another ten minutes.” And I said, “No, this is it. We’re not going any shorter than this.” 

At that point, I realized what had transpired, but I was never like, “Man, I wish we’d kept that.” When we re-released the movie this year, there was a chance to re-incorporate anything that was cut out or omitted, but I had no interest in doing that whatsoever. I don’t mean this for every filmmaker, but for this filmmaker, the movie that goes out in the theaters is the movie. That’s the director’s cut.

Were you surprised that Cannes agreed to premiere what was considered to be a controversial film at the time? 

No, because I’d been spoiled by Clerks going to Cannes. I didn’t intend to be a film festival/awards guy, but we won two awards at Cannes with Clerks. So I had this unfair notion of, “Well, if it happened to our piece of shit, then it must happen to everybody.” It wasn’t until years later did I start to realize that I was in a very rarefied position. So we made Dogma to go to Cannes — and talk about fucking privilege. 

The movie we were trying to emulate was Pulp Fiction. We saw it before anyone ever did at the secret screening off the Croisette the night before it debuted at the festival. So in my headcanon, I was like, “Well, I gotta return.” After I saw Pulp Fiction, Dogma became a lot closer to the movie we all know. It became more violent and bloody, and I saw the tonal shifts that were possible in Pulp Fiction. So in the DNA of Dogma, and once I was in a relationship with Miramax, we were always going to be heading to Cannes. That sounds so fucked up at my age now.

Case in point, Dogma went back to Cannes this past May in the Cannes Classic section. We got to walk the fucking carpet and go up the stairs. And at the top of the stairs, [festival director] Thierry Frémaux was like, “You’re back.” I hadn’t seen that dude in years. So I got up on stage and told everybody: “Hey, not for nothing, but I really thought I was done with the film festival aspect of my career. But being back here for the last few days has really reminded me of a beautiful time in my life when this all started. So I’m here to say that I’m going to write a sequel to Dogma, and I’m going to come back to show it here.” The audience all applauded, and right next to me, Thierry said, “If it is good.” 

So there was a part of me that used to just believe you’re automatically there, and then later in life, I was disabused of that notion. We submitted Clerks III and heard nothing. I then realized it’s not always made manifest. It’s the same as Sundance. The first time I submitted a movie to Sundance that they didn’t take, I was like, “What!?” I was literally outraged and heartbroken because I thought I was part of the family. But Dogma was expected to go to Cannes. It would’ve been a surprise if we didn’t get to go to the festival at that point.

Every time I talk to you, I inquire about Twilight of the Mallrats because I quoted Mallrats’ “framing business” line in my senior yearbook. 

I still love that. 

You previously mentioned to me how you hoped to have Shannen Doherty’s best friend, Sarah Michelle Gellar, fill her role in Twilight of the Mallrats. Sarah actually commented on our story in support of such a tribute, saying, “Here for this idea!”

You’re going to make me cry; I didn’t know that. She’s a good egg, man. I got to work with her on the Masters of the Universe: Revelation cartoon, and we were at a party at [EP] Ted Biaselli’s house when the show launched. It’s one of the only good memories I have from that show launching because the internet then came after me. So Sarah was there, and I was like, “It’s wild that it’s taken us this long to meet and work together.” And she said, “We met years ago. I auditioned for Mallrats.” And I was like, “What!?” And she was like, “Trish the Dish.” And I was like, “I had no fucking idea.” So hearing that she responded positively to the idea of her playing Shannen’s part, Rene, it’s going to make me cry.

You’ve tried and tried to pry that door open again, but Universal is indifferent to Mallrats 2. Have you asked Alessandra Williams if she can help free up Mallrats in the same way she did for Dogma?

I don’t think anybody can. We’ve been trying for ten years. Years ago, when I was represented at William Morris, I said to my old agent, Phil Raskind, “I want to make a Mallrats sequel.” And he said, “Well, there’s three paths by which we could do that. Universal could just make it.” And I was like, “I can’t imagine that’s likely.” And then he said, “We could bring in money, and they could co-pro.” And I was like, “I can’t imagine they’re going to do that either.” And then he said, “The third option is we just take it out of Universal, finance it ourselves and set it up.” And I was like, “That’s possible?” And he said, “Yeah.” 

Knowing there was a path, that’s when I went and wrote it. I then finished the script, and he was like, “We’ve got to turn it into Universal.” And I was like, “Why? They’re not going to make it.” And he said, “Well, they’ve got to pass on it.” So we sent it into Universal, and they passed on it: “We don’t want to make this.” So I was like, “Great. Let’s tell them that we want to take it out. We’ll cut them a percentage, but we’ll finance it.” Word then came back that Universal has never let a title go in the history of the studio. They consider themselves a catalog house. That’s how they made their fortune. That’s how the company was built. So there’s never been a precedent where they were like, “Just take the movie and do what you want with it. Or take the movie and you can license it from us.” They’re just not in that business. 

So there was no longer that third option, and it’s a shame because finding the financing would’ve been so easy. That left the two paths of either co-producing or making it themselves, and they haven’t historically been interested in either. So I don’t know anybody that’s going to move that piece, man. The only person who moves that piece is somebody in Universal, and I keep hoping that I live long enough until somebody who grew up as a Mallrats fan is in a position of power. Or maybe if it’s someone’s last year there, they’ll be like, “It doesn’t matter what happens now,” and then they agree to make a Mallrats sequel, sequel series or what have you. 

I’m also involved with Universal on an unrelated thing that we’ve been working on for a couple years, and if that gains traction and happens, then it makes a Mallrats sequel conversation easier to attempt again. But I’ve been trying for the better part of a decade, and what happens is you start hacking things up for parts. So a lot of things in the old Mallrats sequel script wound up in Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, like that big Iron Bob costume. So when you start hacking scripts up for parts, that’s when you start losing hope. I hacked the original Mallrats 2 up for so many parts that I had to write another script, and that one is Twilight of the Mallrats. I haven’t borrowed anything from it, and it could still absolutely work, so fingers crossed.

In other news, did the trade war with Canada really derail the new Jay and Silent Bob movie you were going to shoot earlier this year?

Yeah, we lost out. We had Canadian money, and the Canadian money went away. It was just as people were getting aggressive with our friends up north. But beggars can’t be choosers. I can never be mad. I can’t bitch, even existentially, and scream into the wind. Why? I’ve been so fucking blessed up until now, and I also don’t have the money. If I’m taking somebody else’s money and they’re like, “Well, I don’t want to give you the money anymore,” I’ve got no right to bitch. The only person I was mad at in that moment was myself for not concentrating on being more of a financial success. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done well. I’m very happy. But there’s a version of me that could have had more access to money.

I went and saw Ben recently at Artists Equity, and he’s such a grown-up. He’s a man. He’s always been built like an action figure, but he’s now captain of industry. He’s in the right place. It’s not vanity where an actor wants to run a studio. He’s the fucking smartest guy in the room. But he appears to me as such a grown-up, and I just never feel like that. I don’t treat myself very seriously, and I don’t treat the movies very seriously. I love them, don’t get me wrong. It’s a serious business that I’ve committed a fucking lifetime to, but I have a hard time justifying a Kevin Smith movie to people. So I try to keep the time that you have to engage with one as limited as possible for that reason. I’ve always been painfully self-aware like that. The audience also has been dwindling from day one. They’re not going to stay forever, and some people have moved on or died because I’ve been around long enough at this point. 

So I was more down on myself for the movie falling apart. I was like, “Well, this is your fault. You should have been more successful. If you’d been better at your job, then you could fucking pay for your own art, and you wouldn’t have to go hat in hand to somebody else.” So I can’t bitch. Now, that being said, it looks like Jay and I will get to slap on the fake hair again in early 2026 and do it one more time. (Smith knocks on wood.) I’m sure we’ve passed the point where people are like, “You guys are a little long in the tooth,” but I have such a good time making those flicks. 

I also get to interact with people that enjoy them, and while I know they’re not for everybody, I can still get a movie made. It’s much more difficult now than it was three years ago. So I’m happily going to do it, man. I’ve got a bunch of stoner movies, but I didn’t intend to make them as stoner movies. They just wound up being that. But I intended to make a stoner movie with this one, Jay and Silent Bob: Store Wars. It’s funny.

So we did find money that’s not from Canada, and that’s not a slam on Canada. I’m not mad. In a world where tariffs now happen, some people are like, “I ain’t got money like that anymore.” It’s happening on our side too. There are people that used to invest in film that are not investing in film now because money is tight across the board. One day, if people are like, “We’ve got no money for you whatsoever,” I could always put up my house and make a flick if I feel the absolute need. 

There’s a script I’m working on right now, which is fucking magical to me, and I really enjoy it. It’s more expensive than shit I normally do because it’s more of a period piece. But I’ve been having a blast getting up every morning and writing it for the last two weeks. So I still have the bug and the passion for it. I’ve never taken it for granted. I still count my blessings that I ever got to do it, and it’s not founded in funding. It’s not like I’ve got to make a movie in order to pay my bills. There’s just stuff that I still want to say, and I’m so relieved that I still have something I want to express after three decades. And mercifully, there are still some people out there who want to see what I have to say.

You mentioned that Jay and Silent Bob: Store Wars is a stoner comedy, and you quit smoking cannabis after your 2023 stint at the aforementioned mental health treatment center in Arizona. Were you ever worried about whether you could still capture your usual alchemy on the page? Or did you remind yourself that you were a successful writer long before smoking? 

I was never scared to where I said, “Who will I be now?” I put out a video where I was like, “I smoked for 15 years, and now I’m not going to smoke for the next 15 years.” But I didn’t get very far on that one. I made it about a year and a half. I said to my wife at one point that I was thinking about smoking, and she said, “I don’t know why you don’t.” And I was like, “Because I gave it up.” And then she was like, “But that’s not why you went to that place. That was just a byproduct of you being in there. You were just trying to see how long you could go.” And I was like, “I guess you’re right.” So I started smoking again, and I have no regrets whatsoever. If I hadn’t started smoking when I did, I probably would’ve started smoking within the course of the last year based on how on fire the world seems to be every day.

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Dogma is now available on 4K.