Reported by Entertainment Weekly earlier today, Kevin Smith has announced that the anticipated sequel to the 1995 movie Mallrats is no longer being optioned as a film but instead as a television series.
In an interview on WMMR’s The Preston & Steve Show, Smith said that he and Universal were looking to turn the movie into a series, “We started reconfiguring the idea of doing Mallrats not as a film but as a series… 10 episodes of a Mallrats series.”
20 years after the original Mallrats movie was released to theaters, Smith announced that the he was in the process of working on the sequel. Even though he had a draft of the script, Smith ran into issues with the film’s development when he underestimated the financial aspects of the production and the legalities of reclaiming the Mallrats name. Universal wasn’t inclined to give Smith the rights to the Mallrats name.
Speaking of the process Smith explained that the script was submitted to Universal by his agent but was ultimately met with discouraging news, “[His agent said] Well, apparently Universal has never let a catalogue title go, any title they own, they’ve retained. They’ve never done something where they’re like, ‘Oh, you can take it back and go make a sequel.’ Never in the history of the studio.”
Because of this setback, Smith and his agent— with Universal’s help— ventured into different medias in which the sequel could take place without Universal giving up their rights to the title but still working with Smith’s original idea.
This led to the possibility of turning the sequel movie into a sequel series. There is no word yet as to where the series will land but news of progress is great all the same. Hopefully the series can continue making progress and the people in charge can do their due diligence for the story.
With the original Mallrats being over 20 years old, do you think a sequel now is still relevant? Is it a bad call or could this be genius?
Let us know in the comments.