Clerks III is officially happening and set to begin filming next month
Kevin Smith also announced Lionsgate acquired the rights to Clerks III
Film News Clerks
Kevin Smith has been talking about making Clerks III for a very long time now, to the point where we had lost hope for it ever getting made. The filmmaker’s been through various iterations of the script, ultimately landing on a draft that he previewed in January which shows that the film begins with My Chemical Romance’s “Welcome To The Black Parade” (Smith and his daughter Harley Quinn are big fans). Clerks III is starting to feel more real now, as Deadline announced that Lionsgate acquired worldwide rights to the film, and it begins production next month.
In a statement given to Deadline, Smith says:
“There’s a saying from the Tao that goes something like ‘To be great is to go on. To go on is to go far. To go far is to return.’ Thanks to Lionsgate, we get to return to where it all started with almost the whole cast that started it all! And for the first time since the first time we ever made a movie in 1993, we’re shooting the entire flick on location in New Jersey, as an ode to both the enduring allure of cinema and the resourcefulness and lunacy of its storytellers. Years ago, Dante and Randal made me a filmmaker – so now it’s time I return the favor.”
The last we heard about the plot, Smith was planning to go very meta. Given how Clerks is based on his humble beginnings working with friends as a Quick Stop clerk, he’s trying to tie the upcoming film back his own life story; Clerks III is about the characters from Clerks making Clerks. Basically, Randal has a heart attack (like Smith) and realizes he wouldn’t be leaving behind a legacy, so he makes a movie about Dante and his buddies (like Smith). Say what you want about this synopsis, but it’s far better than the original extremely bleak plot Smith had come up with, which involved one of the characters being diagnosed with cancer and a mass shooting.
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One thing I think is interesting about the original is the discussion of Star Wars, because I can’t think of many Star Wars references in early-mid ‘90s pop culture.
That’s basically how Kevin Smith won all of us nerds over back then.
He is the one who sparked it off. He made star wars fandom cool.
And there was that song in the soundtrack about how Chewbacca is a Wookie.
“I’m NOT even supposed to be in the E.R. today!”
Upsetting news, Clerks II is in the running for the worst movie ever made.
As I understand it, the major stumbling block has been getting Jeff Anderson to come back, as he hates being recognized for the role and even didn’t talk to Smith for years. It was hard enough convincing him to do the second film.
Which is weird, considering he basically made a video game in 2014, Randal’s Monday, where the entire premise is that he’s basically playing Randal who is that character without the surname.There are worse legacies than Randal Graves, to be honest. He got so many good zingers over two movies.
Same problem as the the guy who played Biff Tannen. Sucks that he has to answer for that series of movies 30 plus years on… but a guy’s gotta eat, and if doing a turn on that hated character produces a check, well. A guy’s gotta eat.
He actually wrote a song and does a whole routine on Biff, it’s out there on youtube. It’s actually pretty good.
I just know that Biff Tannen was on Legends of Tomorrow for what was supposed to be a 2 or 3 episode villain arc and then he was supposed to die, but the actor was so unremittingly nice that they ended up having him not only stick around for like two seasons, but had him become a good guy because it was too implausible for the actor (again, Biff Tannen) to come across as evil.
He only was in 9 episodes of 1 season. He was originally supposed to be the big bad of S4 but he was too friendly for it. Whether his role expanded or not isn’t clear. The big bad replacement’s main actor was in 8 episodes but he also possessed two other characters so he was in roughly the same amount of show.
Randall wasn’t even supposed to be there that day.
It was mostly to do with Harvey screwing them over in terms of royalties and back pay.
“Show me on the Navy Seals box where the Weinstein touched you.”
Let’s see if Jeff Anderson can avoid the hattrick of getting screwed over for money from being in a Clerks movie for the 3rd time. Maybe the lack of Weinstein involvement will help this go around.
When is he doing Moosejaws?
Hopefully never, because it is a bad enough joke on the face of it, let alone spending millions of dollars on making it a reality.
But I’d rather him waste millions on a killer moose instead of milking Clerks drier.
But, we both know that Moose Jaws is going to be garbage, he could still surprise us with The Further Adventures of Dante and Randal.
I’d bet on the moose being better, at least in terms of novelty.
Well that’s too bad.
I actually think Clerks II was pretty good.
A lot of people did, especially at the time.It’s one of those movies that was well received but now people like to pretend that it wasn’t.
The cockstain bit is solid.
I liked it…it was much better than I expected. But “Reboot” was one of the worst movies I have seen in recent memory
I liked the back and forth between Randall and Eli. It’s not my favorite comedy, but it had funny moments.
I still like it quite a lot myself, as I find much of it very relatable personally. It holds up for me. Smith has made garbage since then, though.
I enjoyed it. Not as much as his earlier stuff, but it was fun. And the whole star wars vs LOTR stuff was great.
“And the whole star wars vs LOTR stuff was great.”
That was by far the worst part.“I just made fun of LOTR so bad a I made someone puke.”
Uh…ok?
The weirdest thing with Clerks II was how Randal books a donkey show and they’re all ready for a donkey to fuck a woman but it turns out the donkey is going to get fucked by a man. And that’s fuckin GAY! GROSS!
“And that’s fuckin GAY! GROSS!”
So, you didn’t like that joke and turned the movie off right away, not seeing what the ACTUAL reaction to the donkey show was?
I expect it’ll be even funnier and better-received than Clerks 2 (Clerk Harder)! Given how disappointed I’ve been with everything since Dogma, I’d rather see the porno spoof of this, it’ll probably be better made.
I wish he hadn’t made Clerks II when he did. It was right in the middle of that Jersey Girl/Zack & Miri period when he was trying to be a mainstream filmmaker, and the sequel has something of a commercial sheen that, for me, was off-putting. I found Jay and Silent Bob Reboot literally unwatchable, but it did at least have that ramshackle “everyone involved with film’s production extremely high” quality that I find appealing about his best work. I’m hoping Clerks 3 captures more of the feel of the original. Maybe he should limit himself to a budget of whatever $30,000 in 1994 dollars would be today.I dunno. I haven’t really been able to sit through anything he’s done since Cop Out, but I still like the guy and am pulling for him. All the geek culture stuff in his early movies is old hat nowadays, but back in the day he was kind of a folk hero for a lot of us dorks.
I actually think Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is still pretty great. It’s total live action cartoon and it was done at the same time as the Clerks cartoon so has the same vibe. Jay and Silent Bob Reboot simply wasn’t as funny and Jay’s daughter/Smith’s daughter was a bit of a dead end. Clerks II is a decent follow up that has it’s moments. Red State is a cool flick. Then there’s Tusk and Yoga Hosers which are …. uh, things
I’m still disappointed we never got a “Clerks: The Animated Series – The Movie.”
Who is driving car?
OH MY GOD BEAR IS DRIVING HOW CAN THIS BE
That show always makes me laugh.
I wonder how much of that show being as funny and rewatchable as it is comes from Smith/Mosier and how much comes from David Mandel, Paul Dini, Brian Kelly, etc.
I feel like Kevin Smith is straight up trolling the film industry at this point. Whenever he signs a deal I imagine him and Affleck getting together, smoking a huge joint, and laughing at the fact that he just got Lionsgate to pay him $8mil to shit out another gigantic turd no one will watch instead of spending that money on something with either artistic merit or commercial appeal.
I feel bad enough about pushing fifty. I don’t need a 50-something version of a movie I used to enjoy in my youth reminding me of how old I am.
He made that movie already! It was called Zack and Miri Make a Porno!
A few months ago, I saw that the Jay and Silent Bob Reboot movie was streaming on Amazon Prime, and I thought about watching it. I was a big Kevin Smith fan as a teenager, and I thought that even if this movie sucks, which it most certainly will, it’ll be a nice nostalgia trip. Who doesn’t want to visit with old friends now and again?But then I realized that I had stopped watching Kevin Smith movies after Clerks II for a reason. He had never really advanced as a director, and even the movies I loved as a kid had lost their shine long ago. Why would I waste precious time on the Jay and Silent Bob Reboot? No. No, I would not go down that path. Not that day, and likely never.It was basically my version of the end of “Big Two-Hearted River” when Nick decides not to go fishing in the deep waters of the swamp.
I had similar thoughts as you did, except I did end up watching it — or at least, part of it. I’ll probably go back to it at some point, but it’s such a blatant nostalgia wallow that I think you have to be in a very specific frame of mind to enjoy it.
I will always defend Clerks as an excellent portrait of a certain kind of Gen X ennui, and a more general period in your twenties that a lot of people go through where they’re kind of directionless. At that age, there’s something appealing and liberating about not taking your wage slave gig seriously even as society insists that you must.
If you’re still acting like that into your thirties and forties, it’s more a haunting tale of arrested development and the Kafkaesque drudgery of working class life under late-stage capitalism. Clerks II is unknowingly an existential horror movie dressed up as a comedy, and it doesn’t work as well because of that.
Yeah, the end of Clerks II is just depressing, and I don’t think the film quite realizes that.I’ve rewatched both Clerks and Mallrats in the past few years, and both films have their moments. Those two are solid 90s comedies, even if not everything holds up.
Tell ‘em, Steve-Dave!
I kind of liked the ending of Clerks II, the workers seize the means of production!
The real issue with the movie, imo, was that casting an actual movie star with Rosario Dawson really highlighted everyone else as a charisma void.
the ending also nullified the whole point of the original clerks. clerks 1 asks ‘what if there’s more to life?’, clerks 2 answers ‘there isn’t! being a clerk is actually the happiest you will ever be!’
Yes, that’s pretty much what Simon Pegg said about ten years ago when people wanted him to make a new series of Spaced, which filled some of the same cultural space in Britain as Clerks did in the US. It would be horrific to imagine Tim and Daisy and Mike and the rest stuck in the same rut in their 30s or 40s.
IMO, the only thing Clerks 2 really had going for it was that amazing dance break by the flash mob, to the Jackson 5’s ABC.And I say that as someone who used to love ‘View Askew’ films…
I don’t know. I still get a juvenile chuckle out of “pillowpants” and the “listerfiend” occasionally.
“Reboot” was horrible – absolutely horrible. I’ve seen the first maybe 20 times but couldn’t get more than 15 minutes into the sequel. I hated every minute of what I saw.
I thought Clerks 2 was decent when it came out (don’t know what I’d think now), but yeah, Reboot is straight trash. Every single thing is does to try to update the characters to present times is cringeworthy. I somehow watched the whole thing, though, which I couldn’t do for Yoga Hosers. That movie was just painful.
I watched Reboot w/ my wife (we’re about the same age and fondly remember “Clerks”) and though it wasn’t awful, there was no new ground broken w/ any of the characters. Also, there was a scene w/ Affleck, who gave a speech that started off great, but jumped off the track and at that point we both looked at each other and talked about how Smith just can’t let a nice moment alone.
I’m kinda curious about the hate for Clerks II. I wrote him off after Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back the original, but felt Clerks II was a return to form for me. What am I missing?
I came here to say the same thing. He was a good new director who never advanced his skills or subject matter. Still, I’m sure someone will go see this, so have at ‘er.
Yeah, I’ve got nothing against the guy. He can continue to make movies. He gave me some laughs, so I wish him all the best on his journey.
I watched it last year and it’s everything you would expect: Smith idolizing times 30 years ago (which weren’t all that great in the first place), everyone looking waaaayyyy too old to play slackers (especially Jason Mewes), meta humor only a hardcore subset will get but will alienate the rest. I pictured a rando, who knows fuck-all about the View Askewniverse, on the Amazon Prime app watching it very confused. It’s very depressing has Smith has amassed such a lucrative, niche fan base who will follow him wherever — yet won’t demand anything of risk, or, least of all, quality.
Why do you picture someone unfamiliar with the View Askew-niverse deciding to watch something that has “reboot” in the name?
I think the thing that his later films prove is that Smith really isn’t much of a director. He’s a ‘put it on stilts and shoot’ guy. His strength was in his characters and dialogue that reflected the asinine life and conversations that working slob Gen-Xers of the time had. It was deliberately vulgar and meaningless. He wound up doing some interesting things in writing comics too, when he’d sit down and do it. The problem with Smith is that he never seemed to really work at his craft. He could have been a great screen writer if he’d of worked on it; but he didn’t.
His TV work shows he absolutely has grown as a director, he’s incredibly capable as a director for hire within a network system, with a good DP and second unit.He chooses to make the types of films he makes, because that’s what he’s into – he’s perfectly able to turn out cookie cutter TV show of the week stuff to pay the bills.Sure he’s no Jonathan Frakes, but he’s a solid Kevin Smith.
“Kevin Smith has been talking about making , to the point where we had lost hope for it ever getting made.”I presume the hope was so that there could be several more articles that use the guy as a punching bag?This site has historically gone out of its way to talk shit about him, even though he’s generally harmless.Yes, his work has declined, Reboot aside, but if he’s happy catering to his niche, then Godspeed.
Yeah, I don’t know why he gets such hate around here, especially since he seems like a decent fellow who doesn’t appear to have sexually harassed or assaulted anyone or been exposed as a racist, which makes him something of a unicorn among white male showbiz celebrities. You’d think that someone like Smith who’s an enthusiastic pop culture geek and genuinely engaged with his fans would be better received here.
I remember watching an interview he did with Tatiana Maslaney where he joked that she was giving him a boner. That was pretty gross.
*Maslany
was it heterosexual?
Ah well.
We should def tie him up and set him on fire, he’s clearly an inhumane monster hiding in plain sight, yeah?
In fairness, I had a buddy that had the worst encounter with Kevin Smith ever. The guy was an utter dick to him at a convention. That said, Jason Mewes saw it happen and tried to patch things up, talking to my friend for an hour and being a real mensch.Even “nice” people can be real dicks in real life, but Jason Mewes is a good dude.
People tend to hate him because he’s incredibly easy to upset/hurt.Guy has his heart on his sleeve, is the exact opposite of toxic masculinity and the press poke at him for it to make him cry.He’s not the world’s greatest filmmaker, but he’s made at least 3 brilliant movies, (which is 3 more than a lot of directors), and he’s proving he’s more than capable of being a good for hire director with his TV work.
This site has historically gone out of its way to talk shit about him… Yes, his work has declined.You just asked and answered your own point. It’s a pop-culture media site and unfortunately as much as he’s a nice enough bloke for as far as anyone knows the fact remains his last successful film was Clerks 2 15 years ago and the last original one was in 1999 despite having released nine films in the 2000s.And yet despite that for as much as you complain about this site’s view I could say the same about people who still act like its 2001 and whatever latest disaster he’s releasing is his first film since Dogma.
“the last original one was in 1999″Was Tusk a remake? It seems original to me…
the last original one was in 1999
Then you obviously never saw Red State.
So should be the AV Club just pretend that Yoga Hosers was a cinematic masterpiece because Smith is “generally harmless?”
No, but it can grudgingly admit that Red State and Tusk we’re both very entertaining little B movies
Not mostly harmless, but generally harmless.
Kevin Smith: The Uwe Boll of Gen X nerds. God, he is awful.
D: Randall, ya never go ass-ta-mouth!R: Ya sound like my mom.
As much as I hate the idea of “Clerks III” (or just about any Smith rehash), I *would* like to see a “Mallrats” sequel. I really liked that one – it was chatty dick & fart jokes without taking itself too seriously.
What about Mallrats 2? He could film it in the crumbling wreckages that have become the great American mall.
Mallrats 2: DefunctLand
He’s actually making Mallrats 2, or at least is hoping to. The project seemed to die initially when the original mall was demolished, then he returned to it mid-COVID and when it seemed that Shannen Doherty is back on the mend. Not sure what’s the status of it now since he’s working on Clerks 3 and Doherty’s cancer is back and on stage IV.
No…please…
I’d rather he take the money going into Clerks III and spend it on Season 2 of Clerks: The Animated Series.Seriously, how the fuck has that not been revived in any way, shape, or form?
Lack of marketing potential, I think? For a long time everything with those characters was in limbo because the Weinstein Company fucked over the main guys on royalties and while the original Clerks is a cult film and the Animated Series even more so, Smith is not exactly a cinematic hot commodity since everything he’s made post-Clerks II is garbage.Smith wanted to make an animated continuation at some point but that idea died after Miramax was left in Disney’s hands and he didn’t want to work without the Weinsteins, since they weren’t meddling in his work. It’s part of the reason he’s been feeling particularly guilty about that association after #MeToo – he basically owes those motherfuckers a career.I imagine we might get another shot at Clerks TAS if this one does well enough. Ironically, we could have had a lot more of that show if they went with a different channel – they got an offer from one that would allowed them to do whatever they wanted, but they ended up going with ABC because it seemed more sensible on its face (bigger budget and promo potential over giving up some creative control). Mosier and Smith have said that it wasn’t their brightest idea.
I think the only one that has legal trouble is either Chasing Amy or Dogma, since Weinstein directly owns that one rather than Miramax/Lionsgate/whoever. But in either case, there was, like, 10 years between TAS ending and Harvey’s fall. Hell, they could have simply made it in Flash and posted it up on the web, especially when YouTube started getting popular.
Ironically, we could have had a lot more of that show if they went with a different channelI love how in the commentary track for that episode — I think it was the “Outbreak” one — Smith and Mosier remember how one of the voice actors was really excited about landing a role on a Fox show, and they were dismissive about it in a “get a show on a REAL channel” way.The actor? Bryan Cranston. The role? The dad on “Malcolm in the Middle.”
I thought Clerks II was great, but honestly everything he’s made since has been pretty awful. Red State was okay, I guess.
I like the idea of the clerks making Clerks, but while I’m happy for it to technically take place in Smith’s increasingly nonsensical and self-referential Askewniverse, I really hope that the film takes itself a little more seriously than Jay and Silent Bob Reboot did. That movie had a a core character journey that was completely ruined by the self-indulgent nonsense surrounding it.
I don’t want any zany fourth-wall breaking moments or improbable and show-stopping celebrity cameos. I want an actual sequel to Clerks, a low-key, grounded, silly-as-hell movie, with real-but-imprecise stakes, that isn’t sidetracked by elaborately-staged (yet somehow sloppily-filmed) slapstick routines.
You didn’t even accuse him of being a Nazi. You’re slipping, TT.
I consider myself a lapsed Smith fan. Unlike Catholicism, I intend to revisit his work, especially those I haven’t seen, like Red State, Reboot, and Cop Out. I love his first few films, especially Clerks and Chasing Amy, that’s enough good will earned. It’s just time constraints and other works drawing my interest is all. I don’t really mind that he hasn’t been able to say much new or personal, but I’ll enjoy the next Mallrats if I won’t get the next Chasing Amy. Maybe since it’ll be a meta making of movie, there will be something there. I kind of wanted to see Dante and Randall trying to run a business, especially regarding RST Video, in an age where the competition is Red Box, streaming services, and piracy. Randall definitely pirates movies.
I have to say that I didn’t really enjoy Red State. I remember reading an article talking to him about writing it and how his process was to subvert expectations every so many pages. The results ends up feeling like the movie is yanking you side to side every 10-15 minutes while lacking a sense of cohesion and direction. The acting is solid, but it felt like more of a creative writing experiment.
I’ve seen plenty of bad movies, but I can still appreciate certain aspects of films that do something well. Even if an experimental film isn’t particularly good, it’s better that it’s different than the same hacky assembly line crap that keeps coming out, especially remakes.
Fair enough. You might be able to appreciate it on a level I could not.
“Smith and his daughter Harley Quinn…”
I feel sorry for kids with obsessive nerd dads.
Credit where it’s due: Smith pulled off a coherent and popular shared cinematic universe a decade before the MCU existed, and he managed to nail the concept better than DC or Universal ever did.
If only he’d quit while he was ahead. Should have committed to that post-credits scene at the end of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and let the View Askewniverse rest in peace.
Another Clerks? When am I getting my Yoga Hosers sequel????
Wonder how much of this one is taken up with Star Wars V LOTR and discussions of “ass to mouth”?
I’ll take it. II was way better than I expected.
SNOOCHIE BOOCHIES!
…but will it be better than Yoga Hosers?I seriously do have a soft spot for Clerks II though. So I’m down to at least give another Clerks film a shot, but my expectations for each new Kevin Smith movie are increasingly, insanely low.
can’t wait to hear what these 50 year old men think of the new star wars trilogy.
Wow, check out Kevin Smith quoting the Tao.