Kevin Smith has announced plans for his next project - a musical about a giant Jesus, trying to take over the world.

The writer, director and star of Clerks announced on his Facebook page he was writing a new film script called Helena Handbag. Based on a story from his popular podcast, it will feature " mankind teaming up with Hell to save existence from extinction at the hands of a Rapturing giant Jesus", which he has dubbed 'Christzilla'.

But after unveiling the title page of the script he is co-writing with longtime collaborator Scott Mosier, Kevin has since tweeted he has now decided the story will be impossible to realise on the big screen with the small budget available to him.

So he is now planning to tell the story as a musical stage show, inspired by The Book Of Mormon.

Kevin revealed: "I got about 20 pages in when I realised there was no way to write this inexpensively as a feature film. Everything was requiring too many effects that I could never achieve using in-camera tricks like forced perspective.

"So I started reshaping the HELENA HANDBAG script as a piece of SMusical theater, with BOOK OF MORMON as my spirit animal."

He added: "I thought CLERKS: THE MUSICAL would be my first attempt at theatre one day. So happy to realise it's gonna be something original instead."

The 43-year-old comedian had previously announced his intention to retire from filmmaking following completion of his upcoming horror film Tusk which stars Justin Long and Michael Parks.

But he has since revealed his plans to start filming Clerks III in May 2014.