Kevin Smith's 'Hit Somebody' checked into two parts

Posted Monday, August 15, 2011 at 4:05 PM Central

by John Couture

Buddy McCracken, the fictional tough guy at the center of Hit Somebody, must hit so hard that he's literally checked the hockey movie into two pieces. According to Hour Community, Kevin Smith announced last night at the Montreal stop of his Red State Red Province tour that his upcoming last film will actually be two films.

According to the report, Smith revealed that he realized when writing that the script was getting to big for one film and that he contemplated turning the project into an HBO TV series before settling on the unconventional preplanned two-parter. Similar to what Quentin Tarantino did with Kill Bill, I would assume that they would shoot both movies concurrently and then release them mere months apart.

Of course, trying to guess what Kevin Smith will do is pretty futile these days. After announcing that Hit Somebody will be his final film, he went on to self-release Red State theatrically, launch a successful Internet radio station (SModcast Internet Radio (SIR) and he recently filmed pilot episodes for a new daily TV talk show that he would host.

Hit Somebody is based on the Warren Zevon song Hit Somebody (The Hockey Song). Detroit Free Press columnist and author Mitch Albom wrote the lyrics to the song and is helping Smith with the script. Reportedly, the split is tentatively going to come when Buddy makes the NHL which means that the first part will focus on his youth and minor league career, while the second part will cover his NHL years and his quest for that elusive goal.

Nick Braun has been cast as Buddy and Smith has repeatedly mentioned on SIR that he plans to cast as many of his regulars as possible. John Goodman, Alan Rickman, Kevin Pollak and Colin Hanks have all been mentioned as having roles either written for them or reserved for them in Hit Somebody.

My dad first got me up on skates when I was three years old and I have played hockey ever since. As an unabashed fan of Kevin Smith, I couldn't have dreamed of a better person to helm what might simply go down as the best hockey movie, er movies, of all time, if not sports movies in general.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Warren Zevon song, I've embedded it below for your listening pleasure. Hit Somebody was originally slated to film late this year with a release in 2012, but it's unknown what this development will do to its release schedule.

What do you think? Are you excited about this upcoming project?