Kevin Smith Confirms Clerks 3 Is Coming Next Year

Clerks, the movie that gave director Kevin Smith his first hit and helped jumpstart his career, came out 27 years ago.

In honor of that anniversary, Smith announced that the third movie in Clerks universe, called Clerks 3, will come out in 2022.

In a statement, Smith said he was extremely excited about the project.

“There’s a saying from the Tao that goes something like ‘To be great is to go on. To go on is to go far. To go far is to return.’ Thanks to Lionsgate, we get to return to where it all started with almost the whole cast that started it all,” Smith said. “And for the first time since the first time we ever made a movie in 1993, we’re shooting the entire flick on location in New Jersey, as an ode to both the enduring allure of cinema and the resourcefulness and lunacy of its storytellers. Years ago, Dante and Randal made me a filmmaker – so now it’s time I return the favor.”

While Clerks is a bonafide cult classic, Smith has made other popular movies over the years including Dogma, Red State, Mallrats and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

Smith said the plot of Clerks 3 is going to revolve around protagonist Randal’s heart attack. Smith had a heart attack in 2018 that almost ended his life. According to Smith, the heart attack causes Randal to reevaluate his life.

“Randal has a heart attack, decides that he came so close to death, and his life has meant nothing, there’s nobody to memorialize him, he has no family or anything like that,” Smith said. “And in the recovery, while under fentanyl, he comes to the conclusion at mid-life, having almost died, having worked in a movie store his whole life and watched other people’s movies, he tells Dante, I think we need to make a movie. So Dante and Randal make ‘Clerks.’ That’s the story of ‘Clerks 3.’”

Smith also said Clerks 3 was his most biographical to date.