Here's Why 'Clerks 3' Isn't Happening
Posted on Wednesday, May 30th, 2018 by Chris Evangelista
Kevin Smith is set to begin working on a new Jay and Silent Bob film, but don't expect to see Clerks 3 anytime soon. During a recent podcast, Smith revealed the reason why Clerks 3 is dead.
After Clerks 2 hit theaters in 2006, Kevin Smith was interested in making a third entry in the slacker comedy series. But alas, it was not to be. Smith had a script ready to go, and a budget set, but what ultimately killed Clerks 3 was the disinterest of one of the lead actors. During a recent "Fatman on Batman" Q&A (via CB), Smith confirmed that Jeff Anderson, who played video store clerk Randall in the series, didn't want to return, which kind of put the final nail in the Clerks coffin.
"You need four people to make a Clerks movie," Smith says. "For a while, one of the clerks did not want to be involved. I wrote the script, he dug the script, he was just like, 'Yeah, don't wanna do it.' It took me years to get him to a place where, 'Oh, maybe I'll do this.' And then it looked like we were moving forward. We had loot for it. $8 million. That was the budget." Smith goes on to say:
"One of the four main characters did not want to be involved. It quickly spiraled out of control in a big, bad way, and wound up not happening and probably could never happen after the stream of events that hit a wall, and sometimes that's a wall you can't get over…So, yeah, sadly, that gets put to the side."
To Smith's credit, he didn't decide to soldier on and replace Anderson with another actor:
"I want it so badly but I can't do it without him, it was written for him. But the Randal part is the whole movie, like it's Randal's flick. So unless he changes his mind — if and when he changes his mind, I doubt that'll happen — then we can kind of move forward. I could never recast it, he is Randal, Jeff Anderson."
Perhaps this is ultimately for the best. When I was younger, the first Clerks was the gold-standard for indie filmmaking for me. As I got older, however, the film lost much of its charm. And yet, I enjoyed most of Clerks 2, which was surprisingly charming. But you can only go back to the same well so many times before it runs dry. The time of Clerks is at an end.
But that doesn't mean the universe Clerks inhabits is over and done with. Smith is set to start filming a new Jay and Silent Bob film – titled Jay and Silent Bob Reboot – this summer. Per The Huffington Post, "the new film will again follow Jay and Silent Bob across country as they try to stop Hollywood from making a reboot of the film they originally made in Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back."
"It's literally the same fucking movie all over again," Smith says. "It's a movie that makes fun of sequels and remakes and reboots while being all three at the same time."
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