Kevin Smith has worked with big stars in the past – your Ben Afflecks, your Matt Damons – but they were usually people he knew way back when, before they became household names. And after his bad experiences with Bruce Willis on Cop Out, we didn’t expect him to be collaborating with someone at Johnny Depp’s level any time soon. But the Pirates Of The Caribbean star is front and centre for Smith’s latest, **Yoga Hosers{
The main stars will be the writer/director’s daughter, Harley Quinn Smith, and Depp’s own progeny, Lily-Rose Depp. They’re leading a hefty ensemble as 15-year-old yoga fanatics Colleen Collette (Depp) and Colleen McKenzie (Smith) who work after school in Canadian convenience store Eh-2-Zed. They’re called upon to go all Buffy when an ancient evil rises from beneath the ground in Manitoba and threatens their invites to a big party thrown by one of their schoolmates. The ladies must join forces with hunter Guy Lapointe (Depp) to fight for their lives and channel everything they’ve learned in their yoga lessons.
It's not actually Depp's first dip into the Smith universe, as he pops up in Tusk as the investigator poking into the disappearance of Justin Long's podcaster. The Colleens also appear up briefly in Tusk, marking the kick off of what he’s calling his True North Trilogy of horror-flavoured films drawing from Canadian myths and culture.
The rest of the Tusk cast – Long, Michael Parks, Haley Joel Osment, Genesis Rodriguez, Jennifer Schwalbach (AKA Mrs. Smith) and Harley Morenstein – are back for Hosers plus a batch of new recruits and some veterans of Smith’s previous work. Tony Hale, Natasha Lyonne, Austin Butler, Adam Brody, Tyler Posey and the director's old Quick Stop/current podcasting stalwart Jason Mewes.
“People always ask me ‘Are you ever going to make a comic book movie?’” Smith tells The Hollywood Reporter. “This is it – but instead of yet another dude saving the day, our antiheroes are the most feared and formidable creatures man has ever encountered: two 15-year-old girls.”
With shooting kicking off this week, the film’s rights will be for sale at this year’s Toronto Film Festival, and given the names attached, we’d expect to see it hit screens next year. Tusk, which itself premieres at Toronto, will be in US cinemas on September 19, and will be released over here by Sony, though it doesn’t have a firm date yet.