The Story Behind Dogma's Disappearance From Circulation, And How Kevin Smith Got It Back

The Bible contains all sorts of stories involving angels and demons, lost symbols and other iconography Dan Green has purloined to make airport-friendly thrillers. But on the 2025 movie schedule, the long-awaited conclusion to a drama of similar stakes comes in the resurrection of a cult classic: writer/director Kevin Smith’s Dogma.

25 years ago, an already controversial movie started a perilous journey through Hell that included the very familiar demons of religious fervor, rights issues and studio executives who protected their claim to it all. With the ending culminating in this summer’s Dogma: A 25th Anniversary Celebration, and as an ordained child of the great state of New Jersey, I’d like to take you all through the holy epic of how Kevin Smith reclaimed Dogma.

1998: Dogma’s Controversies Delayed The Film's Theatrical Release

In the beginning… Dogma was born with its fair share of problems, the “original sin” of sorts when you look at the history of Kevin Smith movies. For the fourth movie in the View Askewniverse, those problems came from controversy surrounding the story of Bethany Sloane (Linda Fiorentino), a woman of no faith who gets pulled into a raunchy, R-rated Bible adventure.

Without telling the entire tale, let’s just say that a movie that cast George Carlin as a Catholic Cardinal wasn’t exactly made for god-fearing parishioners. That problem spawned the first huge stumbling block that would lead to Dogma's eventual disappearance. It ended up pushing the movie from its originally intended 1998 debut.

1999: The Road To Releasing Dogma Led To A Complicated Rights Chain

As with most other Kevin Smith movies, Dogma has a sharp tongue, a dirty mouth and a warm heart that welcomes all. But that wasn’t enough to prevent the movie from being dumped by Miramax, as reported by E! News in 1999. If you guessed the controversial take on the subject of religion as the cause, you're absolutely right.

Eventually, Variety revealed that Bob and Harvey Weinstein’s indie movie haven would maintain international distribution. Meanwhile, young upstart Lions Gate Films was given the domestic theatrical distribution rights for a November 12, 1999 release. Critics liked it, Catholics protested it, but for a time, Dogma found its place in the world.

2001, 2008: Dogma’s Physical Media Releases Existed Without A Streaming Plan

Since Lions Gate Films was still a small indie company, it depended on larger studios to release their pictures on home video. It’s why the first time you absorbed American Psycho’s reality questioning ending, you did so with the Universal logo adorning the DVD box. For Dogma, the home video branch of Sony Pictures Entertainment was the label to put out 2001’s DVD and 2008’s Blu-ray release.

Sadly, by the time our current streaming ecosystem had taken hold, Dogma’s rights were in a bad spot. With the second hand market offering the title at exorbitant prices, owning a copy of Dogma was like owning gold. The good news was we’d eventually know who needed to get on board to make it happen. Unfortunately, that was also the bad news, as the Weinstein Brothers delayed bringing Dogma back to the people by at least four years.

2020: Kevin Smith Tried (And Failed) To Buy Dogma's Rights Back From The Weinstein Brothers

When sitting down with CinemaBlend’s ReelBlend podcast, Smith revealed that Harvey Weinstein was blocking Dogma’s sale from prison. Launching efforts to restore the film as early as 2020, the Jay & Silent Bob Reboot filmmaker couldn’t make the former Hollywood power brokers budge.

Go figure that the people who pushed Shakespeare in Love to win Best Picture over Saving Private Ryan love to hold onto a valuable back catalog for a long as humanly possible! Circling back to the Biblical analogy department, you could call this segment The Passion of Dogma, only with much less controversy behind its message. However, I did promise a miracle of sorts, and that very endgame was in sight.

2024: Dogma And Kevin Smith Were Reunited, And It Was Good

An interview between Kevin Smith and That Hashtag Show would confirm what was previously whispered in the halls of the Atlantic Highlands’ Smodcastle Theater: Dogma’s rights had been returned to its creator. The Weinsteins relented, and Smith was now able to unfurl his message upon the world once more, through a pristine 4K resurrection.

All that needed to happen now was for a date to be set, in hopes of inspiring pure celebration, and ticket sales that reflect a warm welcome from a thankful congregation. Oh, and maybe a solid plan to put this beloved cult classic back onto home video, similar to the recent 28 Days Later revival - but that's getting ahead of ourselves.

2025: Behold, Dogma’s 25th Anniversary Celebration!

Somehow Easter Sunday and 4/20 have landed on the same day in 2025. This is probably why Dogma’s 25th anniversary celebration is landing several months after the proper anniversary on November 12, 2024, and it’s certainly the best reason. Frankly, one could say that it’s a divine sign that this movie is what we need right now. Or, at the very least, it could be proof that God loves a good joke.

Whatever your beliefs happen to be, I’d like to think that’s the sort of good natured energy that we can all carry into Dogma being restored and re-released. But to close this properly close this story out, I’ll let the creator (not The Creator) take us out with his own message of rewarding faith:

Much like the Jay and Silent Bob: Reboot Roadshow, Kevin Smith is about to walk the Earth like Caine from Kung Fu, only with a very different indie legacy in his hands. With only the seemingly eventual release of Dogma on digital and physical formats left to determine, this wild story is pretty much over. It’s been a long-fought battle, but one that served a righteous cause.

So if you’re near any of the tour stops, or know of a theater that’s going to be spreading the gospel starting June 5th, don’t forget to show up for Dogma and pay your offerings to Kevin Smith’s masterpiece of faith and filth. Let's hope that Red State is the next on the docket for Brother Kevin's Cinematic Miracle Revival Tour, because if there was ever a movie that needed it, it's that.