The announcements from Kevin Smith on his future plans just keep on coming. Once again using his (excellent) series of Smodcast podcasts as a living, breathing, chuckling press release, Smith announced that he’s locked in a new star for his hockey film Hit Somebody. The actor in question? Nicholas Braund, who also features in the director’s indie horror Red State.
Hitting the mic for one of his regular ‘casts, in this case Hollywood Babble-On (co-hosted with actor/voice-over specialist Ralph Garman), Smith talked up his having to find a new leading man after Seann William Scott opted instead to make Goon, which is now shooting.
“Seann William Scott wanted to make a hockey movie real f*****n’ bad,” laughs Smith, “So he went to do another one, which meant we were star-less for a while, which was totally fine by me. But then I found so much of my Hit Somebody cast while making Red State, so the lead is going to be Nicholas Braun. He’s this really great actor who I love to death and he is the perfect lead for this script, based on Warren Zevon’s song.”
The script for Hit Somebody, written by Smith himself, is based on the lyrics Mitch Albom wrote for the song. Hit's plot plot finds Buddy McCracken (Braun) as a young up-and-coming hockey player who discovers that he has almost as much flare for using his fists as he does hitting the puck.
According to the director, he’s looking to start shooting next summer, once regular director of photography Dave Klein is finished working on True Blood. Oh, and he surprised Garman by letting him know he’s also going to get a role in the film.
Braun has had roles in the likes of Sky High and some TV shows, including the goggle box adaptation of 10 Things I Hate about You.
Smith did dip back into letting information slip through more regular channels when it came to Red State however, telling Slash Film that he plans to auction the rights to the movie should it make the cut and get into January’s Sundance Film Festival. “Here’s something that’s not so much news as my stated intentions for Red State: if it gets into Sundance, my plan is to pick the distributor right there – IN THE ROOM – auction style. Might even bring up a professional auctioneer to make it fun and unintelligible. And if you’re a multi-millionaire who can’t make it to the first screening of Red State, fear not: maybe we’ll set up an eBay page for the post-screening bid-calling as well.” We should find out whether the movie has made the cut in the coming weeks, since Kevin has stated on Twitter that the deadline for the festival to inform filmmakers is early December.