Kevin Smith “Tried Like Mad” to Make ‘Clerks 3’

Kevin Smith still can't make Clerks 3.

"I tried like mad to make another Clerks movie, unfortunately, one of the people doesn't want to return for the cast and stuff. And I can't do it without that cat, he's integral. So that went away," Smith told EW. "But I am working on something of a Clerks 3 right now, it's called Hollyweed, it's a TV show that's literally Clerks but in a weed store."

That pilot is available for free on Rivit TV, which offers "audience powered television" allowing viewers to fund future episodes of shows they want to see continued.

Smith said in a May episode of YouTube series Fat Man on Batman he might publish his Clerks 3 script as a comic book.

In a past episode of the series hosted with co-star Marc Bernardin, Smith said it was Randal Graves actor Jeff Anderson who "did not want to be involved" with the long-awaited sequel.

"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 said, adding the project "fell apart" two months before shooting.

"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."

Smith wants "so badly" to revisit that corner of the View Askewniverse, but "I can't do it without him, it was written for him," Smith told LRM Online.

"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."

Smith has since started work on a "massive" adaptation of an outside IP he called the "biggest-budgeted anything" he's ever been involved with.