Whilst we’ve been all kinds of excited ever since Kevin Smith revealed he was working on a Mallrats sequel – subsequently titled MallBrats – the writer/director has now moved to confirm that Mallrats 2 has actually been transitioned into a ten-episode TV show.

Speaking on the Preston & Steve Show at WMMR, as reported by ScreenRant, Smith explained, “A couple months ago, we started reconfiguring the idea of doing Mallrats not as a film, but as a series. Universal and I are just about to close our deal to do Mallrats the series, and then we take it out into the world and find a home for it. So instead of doing a Mallrats movie, I’m gonna do ten episodes of a Mallrats series.”

Smith revealed some of the reasons for this switch, elaborating, “The way I do things is I start talking about them until they’re true. So when I started talking about Mallrats, there was nobody involved except me. Then I brought the cast together and then the script and everything. And the one component that was missing was Universal, the studio. I called my agency and I said, ‘Hey, man, can I just make a Mallrats sequel? Universal owns it. Do I really need to make it with Universal? Can I just write a script and maybe buy the title from them or something?’ The agent told me, ‘Yeah, absolutely. They’ll let it go.’ And I was like ‘Are you positive? I don’t want to start this and that’s not the case.’ And he’s like ‘Yeah, there’s three ways in which you can make this movie. You finance it yourself, you finance it with the studio, or they finance it. But since it’s an old movie and it’s a very small title, it’ll probably be you financing it yourself.’ Right on. Fantastic. That’s what I like to hear. Nobody can stop me from self-expressing.”

Good ol’ Kev Smith continued, “So I wrote my script, put everything together, and then I was like, ‘I’m ready to go. Do I have to reach out to Universal for approval or something? Or let them pass or whatever?’ And he’s like ‘Yeah, we have to submit the script.’ And I’m like ‘Why do we have to submit the script?’ And he says, ‘Because they own the property and it’s a formality. It’s gonna be fine.’ So we submitted the script, and my agent comes back to me and he goes,’ Well, apparently Universal has never let a catalog title go. Any title they own, they’ve retained. They’ve never done something where they’ve been like, oh, you can take it back and go make a sequel. Never in the history of the studio.’ And I was like ‘Wait, you told me that was one of my options.’ And he said, ‘Well, apparently I was wrong. So right now there’s two options, you make it fully, the studio finances it or you co-finance it with the studio.’ So we entered into a protracted negation with Universal, trying to get it made in different pockets of the studio. And I haven’t told anybody this, so I guess this is kind of an exclusive… it is happening, but it’s just taking longer to build it. What we did was reconfigured it. Mallrats is a 20-year-old movie. And the idea of sequelizing a 20-year-old movie, some people are just like ‘Why would you bother? It wasn’t successful the first time. What did you make the first time, $2 million? I don’t know if the world is screaming out for this.’”

Smith also revealed how his time directing an episode of The Flash earlier this year opened up his mind to the idea of working more in TV, and that has been expanded on recently by him having been confirmed to be developing a Buckaroo Banzai TV show in the future.

The last we’d heard on the Mallrats sequel was that basically every cast member from the first film was returning, from Jason Lee, to Jeremy London, to Shannen Doherty, to Michael Rooker, to even Sven-Ole Thorsen, the tough-as-nails Mall security guard (we hear he’s got two kills…).

As ever, expect more on all of this as it develops.

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