During the 2024, San Diego Comic-Con, Kevin Smith did a panel discussion and shared the trailer to his latest film, The 4:30 Movie in the famous, Hall H on Saturday, July 27th for the first time.
The film is about a group of teens in 1986 who spend the day, going to the movie theater, paying for one movie then sneaking into several others afterward. It is based on how Kevin and his friends spent their time as kids. The lead is played by Austin Zajur with cameos by many regular collaborators including Rosario Dawson, Justin Long, and Harley Quinn Smith (Kevin’s daughter and Austin’s girlfriend), to name a few.
They filmed it during the 2023 WGA strike which eventually included SAG-AFTRA. In a past panel discussion, Kevin explained that while he does support the strike, he was able to continue filming due to a waiver:
“Even though the writers are striking, my script was written, so we were getting ready to go into production. Last week, we were supposed to be in production. But then SAG struck, the Screen Actors Guild. And you can make a movie without a writer if you’ve got a script already, which we did. You can’t make a movie without actors. So that kind of killed our plans for the summer to shoot a movie unless we could qualify for a waiver.
“Since the movie was never goin to be an AMPTP movie — that’s who the strike is against — that gave us a chance to apply to SAG and get a waiver. We were already a low-budget movie; it’s only $3 million. Our movie is not a threat to SAG or WGA. It doesn’t set back the cause. So SAG gave out 39 waivers already to productions that were three days away from wrapping, one week away from wrapping, or something like that. Low-budget productions that were not AMPTP-related productions.
“So we applied for a waiver and we were really hoping to get one so that we could maybe shoot the movie this summer, instead of waiting until the strike ends… Here’s something I found out last night: we got our waiver. So that means by the end of August, we’re going to start shooting a movie right here.”
During the SDCC, Kevin gave another announcement: his 17th film and the third Jay and Silent Bob focused movie, called Jay and Silent Bob: Store Wars. It will be about how the duo will run a weed dispensary and enter a war with a rival store.
His most famous characters first made their appearance in his first film, Clerks, then his second, Mallrats, and continued to be side characters (and fan favorites). Then he created two solo films that concentrated on the two characters: Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back in 2001 and Jay and Silent Bob Reboot in 2019.
https://www.smodcast.com/fatman-beyond-1/427-san-diego-comic-con-2024-recap-fmb-live-7/30/24Before his time ended, he did tease that his long-awaited film project, Moosejaws (it will be about what you exactly think it will be about, the title says it all) is his planned next film after Stone Wars. We can’t wait!
Of course, Kevin shared his recap and experience at SDCC on his podcast, Fatman Beyond which you can listen here.
