Good and bad news for fans of director Kevin Smith: he’s got a couple of projects in the works. If you’re a fan of Smith’s, this should be good news, so what’s the bad? Smith is going in a different direction than what we’ve all grown used to.

When Kevin Smith released Jersey Girl in 2004, he veered drastically from the type of films that had given him a name in film-making. From movies that centered their comedic value around sarcasm, crassness, and marijuana, Smith went to the opposite extreme, giving audiences sweet, yet fairly drab, family comedy. His subsequent films, Clerks II and Zack and Miri Make a Porno, while not quite the caliber of his first films, seemed like Smith was making a return to his former style. But alas, it was not to be.

Instead, Smith is working on a buddy cop flick, A Couple of Dicks, and Hit Somebody, about a guy trying to fulfill his dream as a professional hockey player through brute force. Smith has also finally gotten the funding to go ahead with Red State, a horror film he’s been discussing for the last 2 years. All told, this is definitely not the type of content we’d expect from Smith, who admits the films don’t fall into his usual m.o.

Time will tell if Kevin Smith can successfully make the transition to a different style, but one things for certain: good-bye to Jay and Silent Bob.

Longtime resident of the View Askew Universe, Jason Lee, will have a role in Kevin Smith’s upcoming buddy-cop film A Couple of Dicks.

Fuzzy

According to /Film, the Clerks director revealed that the star of the now canceled sitcom My Name is Earl, will have an undetermined role in the movie.

Lee has starred in some of Smith’s earlier films including Mallrats (my personal favorite –screw you if you don’t like it), Chasing Amy, Dogma and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

A Couple of Dicks stars Tracy Morgan and Bruce Willis as a couple of longtime LAPD detectives who track down a priceless, mint-condition, 1952 baseball card that was stolen by a “memorabilia-obsessed gangster.” The film also stars Nacho Libre and Mexican TV star, the lovely Ana de la Reguera.

Written by TV scribes Robb and Marc Cullen, the movie drops February 26, 2010.

Brody's one of the other Dicks.

Kevin Smith, popular director of films from Clerks to Zack & Miri Make A Porno, got himself some dicks for his latest movie. Properly titled A Couple of Dicks, this flick is a comedy about two cops whose adventures include locating a stolen baseball card, rescuing a woman, and dealing with gangsters and their laundered money. Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan are both already locked on top play the two main cops, while Adam Brody (In The Land of Women) is set to be another detective none too pleased working alongside the two. Sean William Scott (Role Models) plays the ‘Shit Bandit’, a thief who’s well known for leaving ‘souvenirs’ at the scene of his crimes.

All tied up within the obvious View Askew Pictures, Marc Platt Productions & Warner Bros Pictures who seems to be attached to every other decent picture out nowadays, A Couple of Dicks will come out in theaters everywhere on February 26th 2010. Filming is already slated to begin at the start of next week.