Kevin Smith has been keeping his directorial career going in recent years with movies like Tusk and Yoga Hosers and TV shows like Supergirl and The Goldbergs, but he’s finally revisiting the View Askewniverse later this year with Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. However, originally the plan was for him to return to this shared world with Clerks 3.
In case you’re unaware, in 2017, five years after Kevin Smith announced he was working on Clerks 3 and approximately two months before production would start, the filmmaker revealed that the threequel wouldn’t be happening due to one of the main cast members dropping out.
This was later revealed to be Jeff Anderson, who played Randal Graves in the first two Clerks movies and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. For the last two years, there's been no indication that Kevin Smith would revisit Clerks 3, but evidently that's now changed.
Kevin Smith is hosting a live reading of his original Clerks 3 script next month, but while plugging Jay and Silent Bob Reboot at San Diego Comic-Con this past weekend (via Comicbook.com), he revealed that he’s writing a new version of the movie that will hopefully get Jeff Anderson back on board. In Smith’s words:
When I wrote Clerks 3, I wrote it during a weirder, darker point in my life, and it's kind of like the King Lear of our movies. I love it, it's one of my favorite scripts, but it's dark. It's bleak, and it's not what Dante and Randal deserve. We're never going to make that version of Clerks 3, but I'm going to write a different Clerks 3 and we're going to make that fucking film, I promise. And in a world where we got to bring Ben [Affleck] back, I'll be able to bring Jeff back. They gave me this much, I owe them one last thing.
So if you were looking forward to learning what happens in Kevin Smith’s original version of Clerks 3, either you’re one of the lucky ones who’s already scored a ticket to his live reading of it on August 3 in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, or you should cross your fingers that Smith will publish the script for the public. That particular story will never receive the big screen treatment.
However, as Kevin Smith noted, the fact that he was able to reunite with Ben Affleck for Jay and Silent Bob Reboot means he’s now hopeful that he can patch things up with Jeff Anderson and convince him to appear in the new Clerks 3. Perhaps the story being more optimistic will be enough to entice Anderson to don Randal’s hat again.
Whether or not this new Clerks 3 actually gets off the ground remains to be seen, though Kevin Smith seems quite confident it’ll happen. For now, Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is keeping the View Askewniverse train going, and the two hetero-life mates aren’t the only Clerks alum who are appearing in the sequel. Brian O’Halloran will reprise Dante Hicks, and Rosario Dawson, who played Becky Scott in Clerks 2, will also be present, presumably playing the same character again.
Stay tuned to CinemaBlend for any updates regarding Clerks 3, but for now, look through our 2019 release schedule to learn what movies open later this year, including Jay and Silent Bob Reboot on October 15.
