Kevin Smith claims that disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein is demanding an exorbitant fee to sell the rights to the 1999 movie Dogma.
Kevin Smith currently has a sequel out to his breakthrough movie, with Clerks III seeing the director return to the story that rocketed him to fame in the mid-90s ‘Indiewood’ scene. However, if Smith had his way, he’d love to return to another of his old projects, that being Dogma, the 1999 movie about two fallen angels that starred Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.
However, Smith is claiming that convicted rapist and disgraced producer, Harvey Weinstein, is refusing to sell the rights to the film back to him. The filmmaker also claims that Weinstein, who is currently incarcerated, approached him about a Dogma sequel shortly before reports about Weinstein’s actions became public, with the intention of finding out whether Smith had spoken to the press about him.
“I was like ‘that makes perfect sense.’ says Smith. I’m guileless, I don’t see all the angles. He was calling not because he wanted to do anything with Dogma. He wanted to see if I was one of the people who had spoken to the New York Times. I hadn’t, because I didn’t know any of that stuff.”
On the subject of Dogma, Smith claims that he offered to buy the rights back but Weinstein asked for an exorbitant amount.
“He’s holding it hostage”, he alleges. “My movie about angels is owned by the devil himself. And if there’s only one way out of this, maybe we could buy it anyway.”
He adds that another company has since purchased the rights but believes that it is just an attempt by Weinstein to keep the film, with Smith saying he thinks he “changed the name of the company and maybe sold it to a different shell company. My movie about heaven is in limbo.”
Whilst you can see why Smith would feel more comfortable prising the film from Weinstein’s grasp, he likely isn’t short on other projects should that not come to pass.
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