Kevin Smith Has Cut Clerks 3 Run Time Again

Kevin Smith continues to tease us with details about the upcoming Clerks III, a chapter in his View Askewniverse that at other points in the past seemed like it may never occur, but which is now in the can and being prepped for release. Smith has divulged details on it in previous interviews and appearances and now he’s offered another update on the film revealing he continues to cut down its runtime. During the latest FatMan Beyond Live Smith was waxing poetic on the latest Marvel Studios original series Hawkeye, using one of his criticisms about the show to drop this new knowledge.

“Now, two episodes, what we saw probably could have been accomplished within one. It feels like they pulled the taffy…,” Smith said. “I’m particularly sensitive to sh-t like that, like, I just cut another minute out of ‘Nope, I’m not gonna force people to sit there one minute longer,’ and I cut that out. These Hawkeye people are like ‘F-ck ’em,’ and we just sit there and watch like everything. But it’s not just Hawkeye, it’s all those Disney+ shows. Loki particularly was just taffy pulling, stretching an idea out for a long a-s f-cking time.”

Smith’s reveal that he’s cut a minute out of the movie comes about six weeks after he revealed he’d cut the film down to an hour and 34 minutes, meaning he continues to chip away at the movie’s running time. Should the 93 minutes for Clerks III remain (barring further cuts by Smith), it will be right between the original Clerks (92 minuites) and its 2007 sequel (97 minutes).

Those hoping for a last-minute Clerks III-shaped gift from Kevin Claus around Christmas time should hold their breath as the filmmaker previously confirmed that the film won’t arrive until next year, perhaps not until the later half.

“It’s gonna be a minute before the rest of the world gets to see it. Clearly, it ain’t gonna be out in 2021,” Smith previously said. “Somewhere between mid-to-late 2022, I assume. I know nothing, I’m just assuming, because we’ll be done by then. I think we do our sound mix in like the second half of July, and I think we deliver in March… that doesn’t mean that the movie comes out in March, it just means, ‘Here you go, Lionsgate, a completely finished movie.’ When they come out with it, it’s gonna be up to them.”

Featuring returning stars Brian O’Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Rosario Dawson, Trevor Fehrman, Marilyn Ghigliotti, Jason Mewes as Jay, and Kevin Smith as Silent Bob, Clerks III releases in 2022 from Lionsgate.