“What do you want to talk about?” asked Kevin Smith at the beginning of a recent roundtable.

“We can talk about the making of it, we can talk about me selling out.” Smith is referring to his switch to a major Hollywood studio (Warner Bros.) for his new film Cop Out. “I had a huge emotional breakdown when Zack and Miri [Make a Porno] came out, because I was expecting [it] to do closer to Forgetting Sarah Marshall business. We didn’t do Sarah Marshall business, we wound up doing Kevin Smith business.” The response to Zack and Miri appears to have had a huge effect on the future course of Smith’s career.

His point of view immediately following its release was “I’m spinning my wheels here. I’m telling the same stories, apparently.”

But Smith appears confident that this departure has lead to some satisfying experiences. He is genuinely enthusiastic about his new project; despite the tepid response most of his diehard fans have shown to the advertising materials. “[Warner Bros.] put out a trailer for Cop Out, and I was like ‘You’re kidding? This is the trailer? There is way fucking funnier stuff in the movie!’ These cats were like ‘Kevin, what are you worried about? All these edgy people that you want us to market to: they’re going, because you made it.”

Indeed, the marketing was a sticking point between Smith and the Weinsteins, his former financiers. “I stand here with three and a half weeks until [Cop Out] hits theatres. There is more awareness for this movie now then there was for Zack and Miri the day we opened.”

Part of the reason he agreed to let the studio change the title from its original A Couple of Dicks to the self-aware but compromised title Cop Out was because of the problems encountered with the title of his previous film. “I watched Zack and Miri not reach as far as it could have, because all of a sudden they just started running TV spots that just simply said ‘Zack and Miri’ but not ‘Make a Porno’. If I hadn’t gone through Zack and Miri, I would have been like ‘Fuck them, it’s Dicks or nothing.’”

Despite some setbacks, Smith seems optimistic about his future, and he seems optimistic about Cop Out, which has drawn quite a bit of criticism from his fans even before being released. But whatever the end result turns out to be for Cop Out, Smith is moving on with his life - and his career.

Cop Out hits theatres on February 26.