Joe Dirt 2 an unlikely experiment for film industry in turmoil

There’s nothing essential about the 2001 film “Joe Dirt.” The David Spade vehicle, about a mulleted hick down on his luck, wasn’t terrible. Critics hated it; audiences liked it, sort of. It made a little money at the box office, and had a bit of a second life on cable. Even calling it a cult film, as some have, seems a stretch. This isn’t Sergei Eisenstein.

Yet the sequel to “Joe Dirt” — a preview of which appeared online Tuesday — is punching above its weight. “Joe Dirt 2: Beautiful Loser” will premiere on the Web site and streaming service Crackle on July 16 billed as the “first made-for-digital sequel to a major motion picture.”

Crackle, the Sony subsidiary that wrangled Spade as well as Christopher Walken and Dennis Miller from the original “Joe Dirt” cast, was excited to plant this unique seed. It is, after all, “a new kind of network for a new kind of viewer.”

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“The long-awaited sequel to the Columbia Pictures cult favorite comedy will pick-up where the first film left off, following the comedic misadventures of the mullet-clad, lovable redneck,” the company said in January.

But for writer and star Spade, the union with the Sony-affiliated Crackle — which offers movies, TV shows and original content without a subscription — seemed a bit like a shotgun wedding worthy of Mr. Dirt himself.

“We wrote a sequel, and we may wind up doing it on Crackle.com, because they want to be the first web address to do a sequel to a movie,” Spade wrote in a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” interview last year. “Because Sony owns them, and it’s a Sony movie. We’re trying to find a way to make it for the budget, but we really want to do it. And keep it good.”

The move seemed a little desperate.

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“The project has been in-development for years, but as we know, that means nothing until the money is on the table,” Cinema Blend reported last year. “So, in the end, money from Crackle is better than no money at all.”

But in the era of Netflix’s “House of Cards,” even big stars are eyeing alternate ways to get product in front of viewers. Spade’s fellow “Saturday Night Live” alum Adam Sandler, for example — whose company Happy Madison produced “Joe Dirt” — signed a four-movie deal with Netflix last year. And then there was the time an international crisis forced Sony to release “The Interview” via alternate platforms.

[“The Interview" earns just $2 million at the box office — but kills it online]

Thus, “Joe Dirt 2” becomes a test case of sorts. Crackle already planted its flag in the sand of digital distribution with the lauded Jerry Seinfeld series “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee,” which it distributed. Can it similarly make it rain for feature length films?

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“The real difference from a business perspective is that Crackle is 100% ad-supported — and free to users,” a blog affiliated with the University of Tennessee at Knoxville’s school of journalism and electronic media” wrote in 2012. “While Hulu has some content that’s ad-supported and ‘free’ Hulu’s also subsidized by the subscription Hulu+ service. Crackle will provide a real test for the viability of a stand-alone ‘free’ (ad-supported) commercial online video distribution.”

Of course, if the “Joe Dirt 2” experiment fails, Crackle can always blame the source material. The not-incredibly-hilarious trailer, which is a bit too risqué to embed on a family newspaper’s Web site, can be seen here.

Clarification: This post has been updated to reflect the fact that Crackle is a Web site and streaming service, not just a Web site.

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