Kevin Smith Wants To Adapt The Most Ridiculous Superhero Into A Series
Love him or hate him, Kevin Smith is one of Hollywood’s most notorious faces. While some may simply know him simply as Silent Bob, Smith is so much more than that.
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Love him or hate him, Kevin Smith is one of Hollywood’s most notorious faces. While some may simply know him simply as Silent Bob, Smith is so much more than that. As a filmmaker, actor, comedian, comic book writer, shop owner, author, YouTuber, and podcaster, Kevin Smith has been prominent in show biz for three decades. Similarly, he is often the man behind plenty of pop culture quips, including the infamous “Bennifer” nicknamed coined in the early 2000s for his Hollywood best bud Ben Affleck’s steamy relationship with Jennifer Lopez. With a treasure trove of untold Hollywood stories under his belt, the View Askewniverse architect recently opened up about an animated series for DC’s Plastic Man that he’d totally forgotten he had developed a few years ago.
Speaking on his FatMan Beyond podcast, Kevin recalled rediscovering his past work on the project. From the details Kevin Smith revealed, it sounded like the DC Extended Universe almost got an animated series starring Plastic Man, the elastic superhero. Reminiscing on writing the series, Smith detailed that he had been sought after by DC to helm the project, with The Big Bang Theory’s Jim Parsons set to play the titular hero.
Speaking more on the unreleased project, Smith said, “I was deep-diving into one of my laptops looking for an old photo and I found a script to Plastic Man that I wrote for a Plastic Man cartoon-like two years ago or something like that,” Kevin Smith said. “I completely f-ckin forgot about it and they paid me to write it and then they didn’t do it and it was with um what’s his name from The Big Bang Theory. He was such a good dude, Jim Parsons. What a lovely dude but he was gonna be the voice of Plastic Man. So I looked at the script and I was like ‘Wow man they f-cking paid me to write this and it’s never going to happen.”
DC and Warner Bro’s have had a recent comedic push into their franchise lineup. This can be seen in the recent success of James Gunn’s Suicide Squad and Peacemaker. Perhaps this opens the door for a superhero like Kevin Smith’s Plastic Man, often considered a ridiculous superhero. Perhaps he could have proven lucrative to the studio, especially with a potential casting that would have surely impressed even the geeky Sheldon Cooper.
Often dubbed the silliest superhero in DC’s lineup, Plastic Man first appeared in DC comics in the ’60s and often appears with Batman or the Justice League. Deriving his powers from the chemical leak, a body-wide mutagenic process transformed his physiology so that he can change his density at will, becoming as dense as a rock or as flexible as a rubber band. While not necessarily considered a leading superhero, with Kevin Smith helming a character like Plastic Man, the possibilities were surely endless.
While Kevin Smith didn’t get into the details as to why the Plastic Man project was shelved, it’s not unusual for the studio to halt a project like this, especially given DC’s hardships as they continuously seem to take the franchise in different directions. And no stranger to turn-downs, Smith likely takes no personal quarrels with the comic company for never getting back to him. In fact, this isn’t even the first time Smith has shared a story like this. Way back in 1990, Kevin Smith wrote a screenplay for a Superman film that never came to fruition. The tantalizing project was set at the time to be helmed by Tim Burton with the man of many faces, Nicolas Cage, slated to play the Man of Steel. Even given a name, Superman Lives never saw the light of day.
While there’s a good chance that the world will never get to see Kevin Smith’s vision of Jim Parsons portraying Plastic Man, there still is a good chance, if successful, DC will feature the oddball hero in some form. Similarly, Kevin Smith will likely keep his prominence in the comic world and continue to work on projects whenever called upon. Currently, Smith is busy ramping up for the release of his newest View Askew project, Clerks 3. While he recently announced that the film was being finalized, the film still doesn’t have a release date attached.
