Clerks 3 Wraps Production in New Jersey

Clerks III has officially wrapped production, with Kevin Smith and members of the cast posting fond farewells to the Quick Stop in the early hours of this morning. The film has been in production for all of August, closely mirroring the lightning-fast production schedule of the original Clerks. The movie, which is set to be distributed by Lionsgate, is Smith's first new feature film since Jay & Silent Bob Reboot, in which Brian O'Halloran's Dante Hicks, the point-of-view character in the original Clerks and its 2006 sequel, Clerks II. That movie was the last time fans got a look at Jeff Anderson's Randal Graves, who appears to be the lead in Clerks III.

Randal, who has always been something of a wish-fulfillment character for Smith himself, is set to suffer a life-threatening heart attack in the movie, as Smith did in real life. It will spur the lifelong slacker to find the one thing he likes better than working retail and making fun of his customers: he's going to make a movie.

A movie about working retail and making fun of his customers, natch.

You can see Smith's official wrap tweet below.

We wrapped CLERKS III around midnight, our final shot replicating the scene from CLERKS in which Jay & Silent Bob were dancing in the dark outside of RST Video! Thank you to my uber-Producers @JordanMonsanto and Liz Destro for making my dreams come true! What an adventure we had! pic.twitter.com/b077m13PEF

— KevinSmith (@ThatKevinSmith) September 1, 2021

There have been a few different ideas for Clerks III over the years, with one getting so far that there was a live script reading in 2020. Smith has suggested in the past that the holdout was Jeff Anderson, who is more reluctant to return to the world of Clerks than the rest of the cast. Randal is irreplaceable, though, and without all of the leads on board, Smith has said that it's a non-starter. This time, Smith brings back Marilyn Ghigliotti, who played Dante's girlfriend Veronica in Clerks. She is the rare View Askew lead who has not been seen in another of Smith's movies since, making her return especially significant.

The first Clerks centered on one very bad day in the life of Dante Hicks, a convenience store worker who got called into work on his day off and spent the whole shift dealing with belligerent customers, freak occurrences, a sex-obsessed ex-girlfriend, and his obnoxious best friend, Randal. Clerks II saw Dante ready to settle down and get married -- but secretly in love with someone else, and dealing with the reality that he has one day to decide where his heart lies.

There is no official release date yet for Clerks III.