Kevin Smith’s departure from film directing may just the biggest story he has ever told. This past weekend, the director stated that Hit Somebody, the film he has been touting as his directorial swan song, has grown so big that he has decided to split it into two films.
Smith was in Quebec touring his political horror film Red State when he made the announcement during the post-film Q & A session. The blog Hour Community was there and had the exclusive –
The filmmaker revealed that while writing his screenplay, which is based on the Mitch Albom-penned Warren Zevon song about Buddy, a Canadian kid who dreams of becoming a hockey player even though he’s “not that good with a puck,” he realized that it was getting way too big to fit into one movie. He thought of turning it into a HBO series, but finally settled on doing a two-part film, à la Kill Bill.
From what he said, it seems like the split will happen when Buddy finally makes it into the NHL; the first part will mostly be about his youth in Canada.
Smith confirmed the story when he tweeted a link to it yesterday.
Coming from virtually anyone else, a potential two-part four-hour dramedy about hockey would sound like a project that would never get made. But Smith has shown in the last few years that he just doesn’t give a toss about the traditional Hollywood system. With his touring of his current film Red State ahead of its theatrical release this fall, Smith has proven that he can take a movie into the black just on the strength of his fan base alone. Granted this is based on the film having a rather low budget, but a profit is still a profit. I think that this could indeed a fascinating way for the director to wind up his rather unique career.
Via SlashFilm.
