At any given time, filmmaker Kevin Smith seems to have about a dozen irons in the fire. Projects of his that have been announced but not yet produced include Twilight of the Mallrats, MooseJaws, and a Krampus project…and those are just the ones that are still alive. One thing that has been dangling out on the periphery for a while is a “mystery” project that Smith has periodically referenced during public appearances and on his Fatman Beyond podcast with Marc Bernardin. In the latest episode of that series, he revealed that the script for the mystery project is finally complete.
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Saying that the project is not his to announce, which suggests that it is likely an adaptation of an existing IP, Smith said that the script has been in development since before he went on the road with Jay & Silent Bob Reboot. The story came up in the context of scripts that either never get made, or languish in development for years.
“I just finished the script today for a project that I started eons ago,” Smith said. “It’s got to be…2019? Like three years ago. And so many times, I was like ‘This thing isn’t going to happen,’ and then it fucking happened and now everything’s in an accelerated stage.”
You can see the episode below (Smith’s comments about the mystery script come at 6 minutes).
Smith’s next film, of course, is Clerks 3.
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.
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 years after it was cancelled. 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 3 will be released later this year.
