It’s been a long time coming, but it looks like the reigning king of crass-geekdom, Kevin Smith (Dogma, Zach and Miri Make a Porno, this year’s Cop Out,) may finally be painting the state red! Smith has long been talking about a project named Red State which has, so far, only existed as an unproduced script written by Smith himself. Now, according to his Twitter page, the writer/director may start filming the horror flick before his expected next film, the hockey comedy Hit Somebody.
Smith posted via his Twitter:
I talk about lots of stuff I wanna do that either happens years later or never happens at all. Happy to report RED STATE is not the latter. First draft was dated 9/5/07. Looks like we start shooting this July. Took nearly three years, but we’re finally gonna roll on RED.
A lot of controversy has surrounded the project, which centers on a town run by a maniacal religious leader modeled after the head of a hateful band of lunatics known as the Westboro Baptist Church.
According to Smith, the film will not resemble most other horror movies, and he expects that many people will not really consider it a horror film at all.
It’s weird because for a few months I’ve been saying ‘horror movie’ and technically it is, but it’s also not a very traditional horror movie in the sense that people have been asking me, ‘Is it a slasher movie? Is it like the Japanese horror flicks?’ It’d be much easier to just show it to them when I’m done and be like, ‘This is what I meant.’ At which point I’m sure there will be people saying, ‘This ain’t a horror movie!’ But to me, it is.”
The controversy hovering around the film’s subject matter has been the main reason that funding has been hard to come by, and there is no real word yet on who will be shelling out the money for a movie that has every reason to not pay off at the box office. Either way, this project has been very important to Smith for a few years and I can’t wait to see how he pulls it off and what kind of reaction it incites.
