“Mallrats 2”: Kevin Smith Says It’s Happening

Mallrats is my favorite Kevin Smith movie.  It has the most comic book references, some of my favorite and most quoted lines.  And according to the man behind View Askew, it’ll be getting a sequel.

I hate to disappoint people but, yes, I am doing a Mallrats sequel,” Kevin Smith said during a recent podcast of Hollywood Babble-On.  The reason, Smith says, is the recent death of producer James Jacks, who produced Mallrats and would always joke with Smith about making a sequel.

You can listen to Kevin from this episode of Hollywood Babble-On where he talks about it here:

Here is the transcript if you don’t want to listen to the podcast:

About a year and change ago now Jim Jacks, who was a producer on Mallrats, died. And we talked about him during the show and what a good dude he was….Mallrats came out and died at the box office. It only found an audience later on. But for years Jim Jacks would always be like “We should do a sequel.” Because when we were making the movie he was like “This is gonna make $100 million.” He was obviously off his fuckin’ rocker. But he was like “You’ve gotta come up with a sequel.” “And I was like, “I have one already.” “What is it?” Mallrats 2: Die Hard in a Mall. And he was like “Oh thats perfect we’ll do it.”

So the movie came out, didn’t do any business and no talk of a sequel ever came up again at the studio and what not. But Jim Jacks never fucking lost faith. Even when I would kick Mallrats and make fun of it, Jacks was always the guy going “No man. Know what would be funny and what’s gonna redeem us? Mallrats 2: Die Hard in a Mall.” So it was one of those things that was an on going theme in his life.

As I said, he passed away a year ago. I had lost touch with him for quite a few years before that and this was the biggest fucking fan of movies you’ve ever known in your life. And Clerks was the thing that kicked off my career but Mallrats brought me into a complete different world and that movie doesn’t get made without this dude at Universal going “Let’s make it, let’s make it.” So I felt real shitty about missing the last years of his life and I met some people who were like, “We ate with Jim every fucking Thursday night and he still talked about you.” I hadn’t seen him in years and he was still talking about me and that movie. So a year ago I was sitting here talking about this shit and I was like “I wanna honor the man in some way” and this is how we’re gonna do it. We’re gonna finally make the movie I wish to christ I made when he was living, man. So were finally going to make Mallrats 2.