Are You Ready For A Four-Hour Kevin Smith Hockey Movie?

If he has his druthers, Kevin Smith won't exit his directing career the way he came into it. He'll go out bigger.

Smith started out on the underdog track from the moment he wrote and started shooting his lewd, crude generational disenfranchisement comedy "Clerks" on a $27,575 original budget and a prayer. By 1994, it had grossed over $3 million and Smith would eventually find himself putting together a 2004 double-disc 10th anniversary DVD.

In 1999, the kind of Catholic Diocese temper-tantrums that would make Madonna (the Kaballah lady, not the much more Holy one) cringe actually helped propel his snarky-but-thoughtful take on the divisiveness of all organized religion, "Dogma," to a place among the year's most successful films.

From 2010 right into 2011, Smith made history again by eschewing traditional distribution by taking "Red State," his dark take on cult-like fundamentalism that eerily mirrors the Westboro Baptist Church's Phelps family, on the road with repeatedly sold-out small theater screenings across the country before a limited Los Angeles release later this year. Smith has now said he may continue touring with the film even after its DVD/Blu-Ray release.

So imagine you're Smith. You've done it all in your career, including repeatedly joking through several of your own more successful flicks about how much critics hated your second movie, "Mallrats." You decide that you'll make one more movie, then stop directing so that you can spend more time producing and distributing films.

Oh, and you're also a devout New Jersey Devils fan, as any self-respecting New Jersey boy would be.

What's your career's capstone? Take a four-hour movie about a middle-of-the-road hockey player and split it into two parts, "Kill Bill"-style.

That's Smith's plan. He recently revealed during a Montreal "Red State" screening that his directing coda "Hit Somebody" will be a two-parter. Smith explained that he considered the story about a legendary hockey fighter who just wants one professional goal scored couldn't be contained within one flick. He actually once considered it better geared toward a TV series, now that you mention it.

The first part will follow the main character's childhood, Smith explained. The second will focus more on his ascent to the pros.

There's this one other factor that makes this interesting: Seann William Scott has a similar hockey-centric project premiering right around the same time, called "Goon."

It's the kind of ambitious undertaking where most studios would probably just ask any director - Smith included - "A four-hour hockey movie? Why??" But given Smith's talent for finding a way to do so much with so little, this might be the project where studios should instead look at Smith's track record and ask themselves, "Why not?"