Kevin Smith’s recent directorial output has been, shall we say, inconsistent. He’s done a handful of decent episodes of The Flash and Supergirl, Tusk (which we liked!), and Yoga Hosers (which we, well, didn’t). Perhaps it’s unsurprising that the writer, comedian, and prolific podcaster is returning to two of his old standbys and running another Jay and Silent Bob flick up the flagpole. Last fall, Smith tweeted that he and co-star Jason Mewes would be reprising their roles in a Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back follow-up, aptly titled Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. Now, we know a little bit more about the reboot… which, as it happens, isn’t a reboot.
ComicBook.com reports that Smith, who survived a massive heart attack earlier this year, let slip a few tidbits about Reboot during a recent Q&A.
“We’re doing a sequel to Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and it’s called Jay and Silent Bob Reboot… It’s us, it’s me and Jay so it’s not really strictly a reboot in the way that people think of a reboot. If you remember Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back it was a movie in which Jay and Silent Bob found out Hollywood was making a movie about them so they went cross country to Hollywood to stop that from happening. Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is completely fucking different. In Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, Jay and Silent Bob find out that Hollywood is making a reboot of that old movie that they had made about them, and they have to go cross the country to Hollywood to stop it all over again. It’s literally the same fucking movie all over again. It’s a movie that makes fun of sequels and remakes and reboots while being all three at the same time.”
(Read: Ranking: Kevin Smith From Worst to Best)
Sounds meta. He compared the effort to Gus Van Sant’s 1998 Psycho remake, which seems like maybe not the wisest move, but follow where your soul leads, I guess:
“Some people will argue from not until the end of time that it was absolutely fucking unnecessary, but I like that it was just ballsy. ‘He literally just made the same fucking movie over again.’ Mine’s not that, we have a completely different script, but I used the script of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back to build the script to Jay and Silent Bob Reboot.”
The not-a-reboot reboot is slated to being filming in August, according to Smith, who hopes to release the finished product in 2019.
