Apparently talks of Kevin Smith retiring as a filmmaker have been greatly exaggerated. In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Smith talks about his next film, a horror flick named Tusk, which is already set to begin production on October 21st. The film is set to star Justin Long and Michael Parks and as Smith stated in his EW interview, “It’s about a guy who turns another guy into a f-king human walrus.” Yup, that’s what this film is about. Color me intrigued.

In the interview, Smith went on to talk about how he set out to write the film after his affection for Michael Park’s performance in his last film, Red State: “That was one of the best times I ever had my career, sitting on a set, rolling a camera on a true f–king genius, who is pretending to be somebody else and I forgot who the real guy is because his performance is so good. I wrote the script around him, so it’s nothing but Michael Parks dialogue porn. Justin Long is the guy in the walrus suit. I needed a guy who has expressive eyes because once you’re in that suit, you’re covered. I reached out to Justin and he wrote back and was like, “This is awfully scary but how can we not? Let’s fall down this hole.” So it’ll be Parks versus Long trying to answer the age-old question, “Is man indeed a walrus at heart?” It’s a f–ked up movie, dude.”

Although many expected Smith’s next film to be Clerks III, which was in turn expected to be his final outing as a film director, Tusk is the kind of idea that only comes around, well, never. As Smith states to EW: “Tusk will be an ivory bridge, if you will, to Clerks III. I finished up the script [for Clerks] in May or June, but the timetable is pretty tough because the budget is larger. Tusk is a moveable feast at like $2 million and change, so it was way more nimble to put that together. Tusk was just something to do while waiting for news back on Clerks III.”

Well, with production set to begin shortly, we’ll no doubt have more to share on the Tusk front in the coming months. Although I’ve never been the biggest fan of Kevin Smith the filmmaker, I have always enjoyed his presence amongst the geek community and an idea this bat-shit crazy would be something to be anticipated from anyone, let alone Kevin Smith himself. Bring on the ‘f-king human walrus’, goo goo g’joob.

Courtesy of Entertainment Weekly