Clerks 3 Is Dead According to Kevin Smith

“I’m not even supposed to be here today!”

For View Askewniverse fans, Kevin Smith delivered some good and bad news today. The good? A new Jay and Silent Bob movie is in the works. The bad? He announced that a third Clerks film won’t happen. Okay. So why won’t it happen? “One of our four leads opted out of the flick,” Smith explained.

Smith had been working on Clerks 3 since 2012. In the past, he described it as a King Lear in a convenience store and confirmed that Dante Hicks (Brain O’Halloran), Randal Graves (Jeff Anderson), Jay (Jay Mewes), and Silent Bob (Smith) would have been brought back.

Is Smith upset that it won’t happen? “Mind you, I’m not complaining: nobody gets to make EVERYTHING they wanna make in this business (do they?),” he shared. “And I’ve been lucky to make anything at all, there’s so much competition out there, so many much cooler ideas from fresh folks. And besides: I had Comic Book Men and then Tusk and Yoga Hosers (which all came together so crazy quickly), and the podcasts and Fatman On Batman. With all of that, how could I bitch about no Clerks III or Mallrats 2?” He added, “Since I sold Clerks and Mallrats years ago, they’re owned by others, which limits my moves with my own material. I don’t mind: back in the day, all I ever wanted to do was sell my stuff so I could be in the movie biz in the first place.”

In 1994, Smith launched his film career with Clerks, a black-and-white comedy film that centered on the lives of two store clerks: Dante and Randal. Smith was able to make his debut film on a meager budget of $27,575, which he scrapped together by selling his comic book collection, maxing-out multiple credit cards, and using funds from an insurance payout and money set aside for a college education.

The cult hit went on to gross $3.2 million at the worldwide box office. Clerks spawned a sequel, a comic book series, an unaired live-action television series, a short-lived animated series, and was the first film in Smith’s inter-connected universe.

As for the sequel, Clerks 2 was released 11 years after the original. This time around, after the Quick Stop convenience store and the RST Video store burn down, Dante and Randal go to work a fast food restaurant. Their friendship is on the rocks since Dante is planning to move to Florida with his fiancée, whose father wants Dante to come work for him. However, Dante is in love with his manager, Becky (Rosario Dawson), who he knocked up after a night stand, and ends ups leaving his fiancée with her. Jay and Silent Bob use their Bluntman and Chronic royalties to allow Dante and Randal to buy and work at their old stores.

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