Having wrapped up (at least for now — there has still been talk of more Jay and Silent Bob movies and that long-anticipated Mallrats sequel) his Clerks universe with the third outing, Kevin Smith is back in original territory. His latest film, The 4:30 Movie, has just landed its first distribution deal.
Not, as you might initially suspect, a play on 4/20 and stoner culture (which has been a fertile subject matter for Smith), it'd actually a coming-of-age comedy set in the heady days of one summer in 1986.
We meet three 16-year-old friends, played by Austin Zajur, Nicholas Cirillo and Reed Northrup, who like nothing more of a Saturday than sneaking into their local multiplex. Divisions creep in when one of them invites the girl of his dreams (Siena Agudong) along, and all end up learning lessons about life and love.
Smith shot the movie in the Smodcastle Cinema he owns in New Jersey – which was once the place a young, movie-obsessed KS frequented — making the best use of a location available to him, as he did with the store he worked at for Clerks. "The day we bought Smodcastle Cinemas, I not only reclaimed an integral piece of my childhood, I also suddenly had access to a visually interesting and cost-free movie location!" Smith tells Deadline. "So I started writing a personal paean to the past for us 70’s and 80’s kids — the pre-information generation who grew up without the Internet, when romance and relationships required much more than a swipe to get started, and the idea of asking out someone you had a crush on was as terrifying as the looming threat of nuclear war."
There's no word yet on when the film might hit our shores, but Smith is falling back on a recent familiar release tactic across the pond – he'll tour it through the summer ahead of a cinema launch later this year.