The director opened up about his surprisingly emotional comedy to ET's Ash Crossan at Comic-Con on Friday.
Kevin Smith is bringing a bunch of unexpected feels along with hilarious nostalgia in Jay and Silent Bob Reboot.
The director, along with longtime creative partner Jason Mewes, sat down with ET's Ash Crossan at Comic-Con on Friday and opened up about the long-gestating meta-sequel to Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back -- and the unexpected cameo that brought pal Ben Affleck back into his life.
After debuting star-studded trailer for the film on Thursday, Smith shared an emotional Instagram post on Friday, detailing how an entertainment reporter posing a question to Affleck in a junket motivated him to reach out to his estranged pal and ask if he'd be willing to make an appearance in Reboot, and after a brief text exchange, it was in the works.
In the new film, set several years after the events of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, the titular heroes find out that the original Bluntman and Chronic film -- a superhero movie based on them -- is getting remade in the form of a modernized, gritty reboot. So they head back to Hollywood to stop the production. Unfortunately, Smith explained, the movie has mostly been shot by the time he reached out Affleck, and he didn’t initially have an ideal place to slot his old friend into the film.
"I had a good sleep on it, and I woke up and I was like -- Ben played Holden, who was the co-creator of Bluntman and Chronic in the mythology of our movies and stuff, so I could pull him into the third act," he recalled. "Basically, there’s a scene that is the emotional culmination of the flick, that’s his scene, that didn’t exist prior. It was like, one throwaway visual moment. But with him going like, ‘I’ll come out and play Holden,’ we were able to do an eight-page sequel to Chasing Amy, right in the middle of Jay and Silent Bob Reboot."
"And he gave us, like, it’s one of the best scenes -- if not the best scene -- in the movie," he added of the surprisingly heartfelt moment. "It’s incredibly emotional, it’s some of his best performance, definitely some of my best writing. And it’s in a Jay and Silent Bob movie! That, to me, is the trick, that to me is like -- after 25 years in this business, I’ve gotten to a place where I can take the least likely vehicle and put stuff in it to deliver to your heart that you might be surprised by.”
Along wit Affleck, Jay and Silent Bob Reboot also features cameos from Rosario Dawson, Chris Hemsworth, Tommy Chong and more. Hemsworth's cameo, in particular, is significant, as Smith referred to Reboot as the Avengers: Endgame of the "View Askewniverse," except "we had way less money. But we did have Thor, so that kind of worked!"
Smith teased the trailer premiere on social media in the week leading up to Comic-Con, posting "in-movie artwork" to Instagram, including fake comic covers and faux movie posters that all play important roles in the universe of the movie.
"In anticipation, I’ll be sharing images from #jayandsilentbobreboot that I haven’t made public yet. Like this faux movie artwork upon which our plot turns," Smith captioned a post on Instagram on Tuesday, showing the poster for the rebooted Bluntman and Chronic, which "now features a female Chronic" as Smith explained.
"I can’t wait to start sharing this epic!" Smith added of the upcoming Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. "It’s my all-time favorite of all my flicks and also a meta scrapbook of my entire career (and life) that sequelizes all the #viewaskew movies in one sprawling story!"
The hotly anticipated meta-comedy is set to hit theaters in the fall. Although the movie does not have an official release date, Fathom Events and Saban Films will show it in 600 US theaters on Oct. 15 with a video introduction from Mewes and Smith.
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