Kevin Smith appeared on the Cinemablend podcast and listed off some of the reasons that studios might be afraid to greenlight his next film, Red State:

1. The Movie is ““decidedly non-commercial, it’s really fuckin bleak and dark, so bleak that it makes The Dark Knight look like Strawberry Shortcake.”
2. “There’s no character to root for.” … “It’s a series of insane, bad choices based on moral or immoral quandaries.”
3. “Everybody dies.”
4. “I do expect it to be a real film festival type film that will travel awhile.” … ” The only way it ever does business theatrically is if there’s like some kind of water cooler chat about it based on the festival showings.”
5. “They’re just like ‘there’s no audience for this movie.’ Like, nobody wants to see a movie this dark.”

“Based on all that nobody wants to write a check for it and I kind of get it. I’m not sitting here going ‘What? Why wouldn’t you want to finance a loser?’,” Smith says, later adding. “I’ve done comedy after comedy after comedy, and to do a movie that’s kind of 180 degrees away from that is, a test of sorts, where I get to see if I’m truly a filmmaker or just a dick and fart joke guy. No matter how it works out, I think I’d be content. Like, if it does work I’d be like ‘wow I know it! I am a filmmaker as well.’ If it doesn’t I’d just be like ‘alright I’m back to the dick and far joke salt mine.”

I’m interested to see what Smith can do with a completely different genre, and a totally unknown cast. I just hope he gets the chance and doesn’t feel the need to inject unneeded comedy and cameos to compensate for the nervous leap into the unknown. Hopefully the result will be more Drawing Flies than Vulgar.