Kevin Smith Re-teams With Tusk Stars Long and Osment For Anti-Claus

Kevin Smith's horror anthology Comes the Krampus! has been retitled Anti-Claus and will follow Tusk, and reteam Smith with Justin Long and Haley Joel Osment, who appear in that film. Genesis Rodriguez and Michael Parks, who appeared in the director's Red State, will also star. Anti-Claus will revolve around The Krampus, a mythical creature who terrorizes and eats naughty children in Scandinavian and German lore. He's often described, appropriately enough, as kind of the anti-Santa Claus. The film will be directed by four different members of Smith's podcasting community, including his wife Jennifer Schwalbach, who will direct a framing device that links the other three. Andy McElfresh will direct the "The Krampus vs. The 3rd Grade," Jason Mewes will direct the "Hitler's Krampus," (twisted period piece), Smith will direct the "Mask Maker" (the Gothic horror piece), Carol Banker will direct the "The Proposal," and Smith's wife, former USA Today film writer Jennifer Schwalbach, will direct the aforementioned framing device "The Bad Babysitter." Smith had previously said that the script reads like a $2 million feature, and that he'll film it just after he completes production on Clerks III. The casting process moving forward on Anti-Claus seems to confirm comments he made later that he could be reversing the order of those films on the production schedule. The concept came about as part of a podcast, wherein Smith and a co-host spitballed an idea that ultimately seemed good enough to try writing a script around. Both Tusk and his upcoming film Helena Handbag (about a giant, rampaging Jesus) were also conceived during podcasts.