When movies like Tremors disappointed at the box office, the U.S. home video market — then bolstered by thousands of brick-and-mortar video rental stores — came to the rescue. It used to be fairly common for movies to make more money at Blockbuster Video than they did in movie theaters, launching cult classics and the occasional franchise. And, according to indie filmmaker Kevin Smith, even without video stores to bolster the numbers, Jay & Silent Bob Reboot did so well on Blu-ray and DVD that it convinced Lionsgate to fund Clerks III.
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The film, which will get a limited theatrical release beginning next month, has had a long and winding road to production. Apparently, though, Lionsgate really became involved after Smith’s previous film impressed management with the level of fan support it earned on “dead” formats.
“Lionsgate still makes DVDs and Blu-rays and s–t,” Smith told his audience at Hall H during Comic Con Interntaional in San Diego. “They sold DVDs and Blu-rays of ‘Jay and Silent Bob Reboot.’ And, apparently, sold enough to reach out to us and say, ‘We sold so many f–ing DVDs and Blu-rays that if you ever want to make more of this Jay and Silent Bob bulls–t, as long as it’s under this pricepoint, f–k it, have a go at it and s–t. The only reason we got to do that is because bought hardware, kids. Thank you for that.”
Clerks III, 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, naturally.
There have been a few different ideas for Clerks 3 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.
Clerks III will be released this fall.
h/t Slashfilm
