Is A Mallrats Sequel From Kevin Smith Still Happening?

One cannot understate the success of Kevin Smith's "Clerks" in 1994. According to Smith himself, the movie only cost $27,575 to make, and that was achieved mostly by maxing out several credit cards. Various reports have the film earning somewhere between $3 million and $4.4 million in its theatrical release which, given its budget, made it one of the most successful indies of its era. It went on to earn many times than on home video and swiftly achieved a cult status among the disaffected teens and twentysomethings of the '90s. Naturally, Hollywood took notice, and Smith's next film, "Mallrats," was granted a much larger budget and greater filmmaking resources; it was put together for a massive $6 million. 

The format of "Mallrats" was very similar to "Clerks," in that it was about two twentysomething slugabeds idly hanging around a single location talking about pop culture, sex, and their relationships. "Clerks,"  however, was set in a tiny convenience store and followed working stiffs during a long shift, whereas "Mallrats" was set in a local mall on the protagonists' day off. It starred Jason Lee and Jeremy London as the film's lovelorn leads and Shannen Doherty and Claire Forlani as their respectively dejected girlfriends. Lee's character, Brodie, would later appear in Smith's "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back." 

Smith has already made a sequel to "Strike Back" and two sequels to "Clerks," and has been toying with the idea of returning to "Mallrats" for several years. On a 2022 episode of Smith's video podcast "Fatman Beyond," he gave the most recent update on "Twilight of the Mallrats," a film that would catch up with Brodie, T.S., Rene, and Brandi 30 years later. 

The initial plan for a second "Mallrats" sequel was to be called "Mallbrats," having been announced back in 2015. Little else was announced at the time. 

Years later, a film called "Twilight of the Mallrats" was apparently in the works. According to a report in Entertainment Weekly back in 2020, the sequel would be about the closure of the local mall that Brodie mourned with his daughter. The film would be largely about how Brodie, a crass, forthright, comics-obsessed character, would be proven right about the state of the world. It's worth noting that Marvel Comics bigwig Stan Lee had a cameo in the first "Mallrats," and he and Brodie had a conversation about the lasting damage of lost love. Lee has since passed on, but Brodie isn't the kind of character to let comics go quietly into the night. Instead, he'd rage against the dying of the oppressive fluorescent light. 

On his podcast, Smith was asked about what he was working on at the moment, and he said the following: 

"I got a bunch of things. For the first few months of the year, I'm just writing. I've got a bunch of writing projects for other people, so I'm unfortunately not at liberty to reveal, but some of them are f***in' wonderful. And that's a different beast than the stuff that I'd do for myself. What am I most looking forward to? We're seeing some traction on 'Mallrats 2.' 'Twilight of the Mallrats.' So fingers crossed, 'cause we heard from the Lionsgate folks they're very happy with 'Clerks,' with the performance of 'Clerks III.' Not allowed to say anything else."

2022's "Clerks III" was a modestly budgeted film at only $7 million. It seems it got just enough attention to make financiers perk up.

Smith added, "Things's looking good, so this could be the year that we return to the mall, y'all." Fingers crossed. Going back to the EW article, Smith noted that the film's entire original cast would return including Lee, Doherty, Forlani, London, Smith himself, Jason Mewes, Ethan Suplee, Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams, Renée Humphrey, and perhaps even Michael Rooker. 

Back in March of 2023, Suplee and Adams appeared on stage at the Steel City Con and were asked about the future of a "Mallrats 2." Suplee, fans might recall, played a semi-wasted mallrat named William who spent the bulk of the film trying to see the hidden 3-D image in a Magic Eye poster (remember those?). Adams played Gwen, a feisty fashionista who had the pleasure of punching Jeremy London in the crotch. It seems that word hadn't quite reached the actors — at least as of March — where the studio stood on the sequel. Suplee said: 

"All I've heard about 'Mallrats 2' is that I believe Kevin wrote a script and he asked a bunch of people if they would do it. Everybody, from what I was told, said yes. And then the rights are tied up at Universal and that Universal is not saying yes to making the movie. That's what I've heard about 'Mallrats.'"

Adams added: 

"Yeah, I think it's something about they would do it, but they wanted domestic distribution and the financiers are like, 'But that's how we're gonna make our money back.' So I think it's that legal [thing], yeah." 

So the fate of "Twilight of the Mallrats" rests on solving legal issues and financing issues. 

Which is, of course, most movies.