1994’s Clerks was one of the flagship indie films of the 1990s. Made on a microbudget and shot in the stores Kevin Smith actually worked at, it was a fun, witty and extremely pop-culture literate watch that now feels like a time capsule of the early 90s. Beyond that, the movie was a smash, established Smith as a name to watch, and kicked off the long-running View Askewniverse. Now, almost thirty years later, he’s finishing up Clerks III.
Principal photography wrapped at the end of August and a rough edit is apparently complete. The cast and crew are returning in December for some reshoots and pickups, but everything we’ve heard sounds fairly positive. But, sadly, it looks like it’s going to be a wait until that first trailer due to music rights issues. In an interview with Screen Rant, Smith said:
“It’s looking like mid 2022, if I had to predict trailer, I would predict March or April. Where we are right now, we’re figuring out music, we have a budget for music [at a certain level] and right now [above that] music. So it’s about making choices where you’re like, ‘Okay, I can tell the story without this, but I can’t tell the story without this.’ Thankfully, I’m an indie filmmaker and have been used to pivoting or modifying expectations for years, so it’s never a problem where I’m like, ‘If that’s what it costs, we can’t play with them and stuff.”
Like the original, Clerks III is set to loosely mirror Smith’s own life. The film will see Jeff Anderson’s Randal Graves suffering a heart attack and promptly having something of a midlife crisis. Determined to change his ways, he teams up with Brian O’Halloran’s Dante to make a movie, which is a fictionalized version of the 1994 classic. Smith explained that we’ll see some of this in the trailer:
When they do the trailer, I imagine – and if they didn’t do this, I’d be shocked – they’ll feature the moments in the movie where Dante and Randall essentially shoot Clerks, but they’re shooting a movie called The Inconvenience. But it looks an awful lot like a movie we’re all familiar with, right down to the black and white.”
While Smith has historically been a little hit and miss he’s been on a roll lately. I’m also very nostalgic for his 1990s movies, with his repeated use of the same cast members meaning the audience has aged alongside them. All of which means I’m excited to see what Dante and Randal are up to now – and the concept for the movie opens the door for some fun cameos from across his many movies.
Clerks III is set for release in mid-2022.