Kevin Smith offered the latest on Twilight of the Mallrats (Mallrats 2), the long-awaited sequel to the 1995 cult film Mallrats, which starred Shannen Doherty, Jason Lee, Claire Forlani, and Jeremy London.
When discussing the potential sequel — that has been in stuck in limbo for years — during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Smith said that after Doherty’s death in July following a battle with cancer, he considered walking away from the project all together. “My first feeling after Shannen passed was like, ‘Well, that’s it,’” he told THR. “Her character, Rene, didn’t just pop up in the movie; she’s a big feature. Brodie [Jason Lee] and Rene are main characters in the movie. So when Shannen passed, it felt like, ‘All right, well the movie will never happen and probably for the best.’
He then explained that over the last month, there has been “weird glimmers of conversations and hope” surrounding the Mallrats followup, but added, “I’m not saying it’s going to happen, but it suddenly seems like there could be a path to victory, so to speak.”
Smith shared that Doherty’s “closest friend” was fellow actress Sarah Michelle Gellar, and that he hoped she would open to stepping into Doherty’s original role in the film. He added that Gellar had tried out for Mallrats almost 30 years ago. “I think that’d be personally meaningful for her on some level because of her relationship with Shannen,” he said. “She’d bring Shannen’s warmth with her, and it’s maybe the next best thing to having Shannen there.”
Following the publication of THR’s article on Smith, Gellar expressed interest in being casted and in the comments of an Instagram post about the interview wrote: “Here for this idea!!”
Elsewhere in the interview, Smith read his final text exchange with Doherty: “She said, ‘Why don’t you and Jason [Lee] and me go meet at Universal?’ And I said, ‘We totally can.’ And she said, ‘Let’s do it. I’ll pull the cancer card.’”
He continued, “It’d be nice. Of course, I’d like to make the movie for me and many other reasons, but now there’s a special impetus. And we know who that movie is going to be dedicated to; that’s for damn sure.”