Originally published March 17, 2015. Updated April 13, 2018.
It was teased last week and then confirmed over the weekend that Kevin Smith would be returning to the Mall once again with Mallrats 2. On his Hollywood Babble On podcast, the director explained where the idea came from, as well as a possible title.
“I hate to tell you this, but I am making a Mallrats sequel”, he told the audience at the show. “The origin of this story stems from this stage. About a year ago, Jim Jacks, the producer on Mallrats, died and we talked about it on this show. Mallrats died at the box office and only found an audience later on, but Jim Jacks was always saying we should do a sequel. When we were making the movie, he said, ‘this is going to do $100 million’. He was obviously wacked out! But he asked me if I had a sequel and I said I already got one: Mallrats 2: Die Hard in a Mall. And he said, ‘that’s perfect – we’ll do it!'”
“So Mallrats came out and did no business and no talk of a sequel came up again,” he continues. “But Jim Jacks never lost faith. Even when I was kicking Mallrats and making fun of it, Jacks was always the guy who was like, ‘you know what will be funny and redeem us – Mallrats 2: Die Hard in a Mall!’. Jim Jacks was one of those guys who had all these cards on a wall, white cards, and he had planned out his future. Each one would be like these are the projects I’m working on this year, these are the projects I’m working on next year, these are the people I’m working with, these are the people I’m trying to work with. He had multiple copies laid out across the barn, his bedroom, his office, you saw these cards everywhere. And Mallrats 2: Die Hard in a Mall was always on those cards. No matter what.”
“So as I said, he passed away last year and I had lost touch with him a few years prior,” Smith admitted. “Clerks was the movie that kicked off my career, but Mallrats was a completely different world – and you can’t get that movie made without that dude. That dude at Universal who is saying, ‘let’s get this film made’. So I felt real shitty about missing the last few years of his life, and I’d meet with people who would tell me, ‘we have lunch with him every Thursday and he still talks about you and that movie’. And so when he died and we’re up here talking about him, I felt this was a way to honour him. This was the movie I wish I’d fucking made while he was still alive. So we’re finally going to fucking make Mallrats 2.”
No official word that Mallrats 2 will be called Mallrats 2: Die Hard in a Mall, but given the story you’d think Smith would want to honour the man by giving it the title he’d always promised.
There’s also no official start date for filming, or if the original cast will come back for the sequel.
