Dogma is coming back, baby! For years, Kevin Smith’s religious comedy has been trapped in IP jail. But as he outlined at Vulture Festival , next year will be huge for thirteenth Apostle Rufus fans. Dogma is going on tour, getting a SteelBook release, and becoming available on streaming.
Then, there will be a Dogma sequel. Smith also explained how the film finally was freed from purgatory. Over the years, the 1999 film has been a bargaining chip between various feuding entities like Disney, Miramax, and Bob and Harvey Weinstein.
As Smith explained, he’s made three different offers to buy the rights to Dogma off the Weinsteins — first for $250,000, then $500,000, then a cool mil. Smith sent his offer to “a convicted rapist,” as he put it, and “got no response from him. Got it from his lawyer.
Lawyer’s like, ‘He’s not interested. The bid is too low.’” Smith wanted to buy back the rights to Dogma because it was a deeply personal film — both as an expression of his faith and his relationship to his deeply Catholic parents.
But every deal that Harvey Weinstein approved gave him profit participation, which Smith couldn’t support. “I was like, I can’t be involved with that dude in any way, shape, or form ,” Smith said. But God Alanis Morissette works in mysterious ways.
The convicted rapist needed money for challenging the aforementioned convictions , so his company sold a huge chunk of film off. “I guess he needed money for his legal fees and shit,�.