Kevin Smith reveals that he’s planning on writing a brand new script for ‘Clerks III’ and promises this time he’s going to make the movie…
Writer/director Kevin Smith has always wanted to make a third movie in his “Clerks” series but after his last attempt to product the film fell apart before it happened, it appeared he was all but finished with the series.
Instead of doing “Clerks III”, Smith ended up using many of the characters from his past films to make “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot”, which opens in October and was expected to serve as a finale of sorts to his long running “View Askew” series of movies that also included “Mallrats” and “Chasing Amy” as well.
During the making of that movie, Smith started to realize that he still hasn’t been able to finish the story of “Clerks” the way he wanted, especially in regards to the two lead characters — Dante and Randal — who were based on him and his best fried Bryan Johnson.
“I owe those guys and there’s one story now that I’m kind of desperate to tell with them,” Smith said during his Hall H panel at San Diego Comic Con this past weekend. “Jay and Silent Bob will be there of course in the background, we just had our moment in the sun with this movie and shit. But Dante and Randal are going to have one last adventure.
“I’m going to leave them in a place for all of cinema history and when I die and shit, I’ll be very happy where they are.”
Smith still has his unproduced “Clerks III” script, which he’s actually going to read in person for the first time in August in a benefit to help save the theater in New Jersey where he first held auditions for the original “Clerks” film. According to Smith, the “Clerks III” script happened at a different time in his life and looking back that wasn’t the way he wanted to end the story for Dante and Randal.
“I wrote “Clerks III” during a weirder, darker time in my life and it is kind of like the ‘King Lear’ of all our movies,” Smith said. “It’s really depressing. It’s about death. We’re going to do a reading of it in New Jersey, Aug. 3 and 4 something like that, as a benefit for the First Avenue Playhouse in Highlands where we did the first auditions for ‘Clerks’, 26 years ago and shit.
“So we’re going to read it out loud soon and stuff and I love it. It’s one of my favorite scripts but it’s dark and it’s bleak and it’s not what Dante and Randal deserve.”
With that said, Smith then announced his plans to rework a new “Clerks III” script that he wants to make in the future to bring that story full circle after the original film launched his career.
“So we’re never going to make that version of “Clerks III” but Dante and Randal do deserve just a little more than they got so I ain’t said it to anybody, I ain’t even said it to [Jason Mewes] or any shit like that but I’m going to write a different “Clerks III” and we’re going to make that fucking movie, I promise,” Smith said.
“Clerks III’ is going to happen. I don’t know if it’s next but it’s going to happen.”
The biggest hurdle that stopped Smith from making “Clerks III’ the first time around was a frayed relationship with actor Jeff Anderson, who portrayed Randal Graves in both of the first two “Clerks” movies.
After recently reconnecting with Ben Affleck following an eight year absence in their friendship, Smith said he’s determined to make things right with Anderson to get him back on board to star in “Clerks III.”
Right now, Smith is about to embark on a multi-city tour alongside best friend and co-star Jason Mewes as they travel across the country to show “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot” and then host a Q&A with fans after the screenings.
