Director Kevin Smith attempted for years to get a Mallrats sequel off the ground, but may finally have succeeded with a TV approach. Before any formal pickup, however, Smith reveals Jason Mewes’ Flash-y inspiration to revamp the sequel, as well its “multi-generational” plot for Brodie and his daughter.

A lengthy conversation with Creative Screenwriting saw Smith tackling a wide variety of topics, including the Flash-side inspiration that led to a Mallrats TV series in the first place. Smith had notable difficulty with Universal funding the project as a movie, but time spent with Clerks co-star Jason Mewes on the Vancouver Flash set saw Mewes recommending Smith pitch a Mallrats sequel as TV instead.

He said, ‘What else are you working on? What about Mallrats? Could that be a TV show?’ And I said, ‘No, you fucking idiot, Mallrats could never be a TV show because …’ And then I couldn’t come up with a good fucking reason! I said, ‘Oh my God, dude, you’re right! I bet I could go into Universal Television and I bet you they’d be more interested because that’s where everybody’s watching things these days.’ Here I am trying to sequelize, theatrically, a twenty-one-year-old movie that flopped the first time. Naturally, no one gets hard when you talk about that in the studio system. But when you step into Universal TV and you’re like, ‘hey, what about Mallrats the Series?’ they got it right away. They said, ‘Are you kidding me? That’d be perfect.’

As to what we might see from the 10-episode season, Smith also offered a taste of the plot:

It’s a real sweet, family story. It’s a multi-generational tale. It’s my chance to do John Hughes and Degrassi Junior High, because much like the Degrassi formula we know our legacy cast – we know Brody and Rene and T.S. and Jay and Silent Bob – and then we meet their kids. So we meet Brody and Rene’s daughter Banner Bruce, and the story takes place in his world and her world. Nobody goes to the fucking mall anymore, so the kids are baffled by it, and Brody still believes in it in a big, bad way. The thing that I’m happiest about is that when I was doing it as a movie – I always saw the two inspirations for Mallrats as John Landis and John Hughes – and the Mallrats 2 script was very John Landis. Very antic, with guns everywhere, and lots of explosions and action, and less John Hughes … The chance to do Mallrats as a series allows me to do more John Hughes than John Landis and particularly the area of Hughes that I never got to tackle as much as I did in Yoga Hosers: high school.

Even without a formal pickup at any network willing to accommodate the series’ language, Smith still expects a majority of original cast (even Ben Affleck) would sign up for the series, which Smith intends to write himself.

In the meantime, Watch the original trailer below.