Clerks and The Flash director Kevin Smith has promising updates for long-planned hockey comedy Hit Somebody and horror Moose Jaws.
Smith was asked about the long-gestating Hit Somebody and Moose Jaws — in the works since 2009 and 2014, respectively — during the Q&A portion of a live Fatman on Batman recording at the Scum & Villainy Cantina in Hollywood, California, where he frequently appears alongside co-host Marc Bernardin.
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“Moose Jaws, we have money for it. Isn’t that crazy? That just happened in the last two weeks and stuff,” Smith said. “More when I know, and I’ll know very soon.”
Smith first revealed Moose Jaws at San Diego Comic-Con in July 2014, describing the project as “Jaws with a moose.” The film has since been teased as the finale of Smith’s Canadian horror-focused ‘True North trilogy,’ following 2014’s Tusk and 2016’s Yoga Hosers.
On Hit Somebody, Smith said, “I did two episodes of SModcast where I read two of the scripts based on that, somebody heard it and said, ‘Ooh, can we do that here, why don’t you bring it here and we’ll do it here and we’ll do it up?’”
“So it’s gonna become this other thing and at the same time, Jeremy Simser — who’s the storyboard artist on Flash and Supergirl and Game of Thrones, some episodes of Game of Thrones — has started doing it as a graphic novel,” Smith said.
“So either way you’re seeing it and you’re gonna hear it as well. And I’m kinda hoping between those two that somebody goes, ‘Oh, this should be a film thing,’ and then it’ll eventually wind up as a mini-series. That’s my hope.”
The hockey dramedy — inspired by Warren Zevon’s ‘Hit Somebody (The Hockey Song)’ — was initially declared by Smith in 2011 to be his last film as director.
Speaking to MTV about the song in 2009, Smith said it was “about a goon, a hockey goon,” calling it a “very wonderful, soaring, moving story that’s also bittersweet and very, very funny, about a hockey player who just wants to play hockey, who loves hockey so much, but just sucks at it.”
“The only thing he can do to be on a team is just be the enforcer, just be the guy who does out there and beats the sh—t out of people,” Smith said.
Hit Somebody takes place in the late 1970s within the World Hockey Association, “during the last gasp of the goon era of hockey when it was all about fighting,” Smith said.
In the almost decade since, Hit Somebody evolved from one film to two-part film to television mini-series, and Smith first hoped to get shooting underway in June 2012 for a 2013 Sundance debut.
He later told /Film in late 2014 shooting was to get underway in Northern Ontario, Canada, in fall 2015, and read Hit Somebody: The Audio Book in a December 2017 episode of SModcast.
Smith next shoots Jay and Silent Bob Reboot in August, teaming his Silent Bob character once again with best buddy Jay (Jason Mewes) as they trek back to Hollywood to halt a reboot of 2001’s Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
