Movies

'Clerks 3' Has Officially Begun Production

Clerks 3 filming
By Jeremy Mathai

We're going out on a limb here. Whatever you might have done on your last birthday, it's safe to say that Kevin Smith very likely outdid you. The cult favorite filmmaker celebrated his 51st in style, taking to Twitter on his last day as a 50-year-old to announce that production will officially begin on his long in-development passion project, Clerks 3. You can check out all the details below.

In a brief but grateful 30-second Twitter video posted early on Sunday morning (h/t Entertainment Weekly), Smith made sure to let eager fans know that they can rest easy as one more grand adventure in the Clerks world is now in the works. As he reveals, August 2 is a date of very special significance on multiple levels.

"Today is my last day of being 50. Tomorrow I turn 51 and we start shooting Clerks 3. It's also another anniversary. Tomorrow is the 30th anniversary of the night I [saw Richard Linklater's] Slacker and decided to become a filmmaker. It's been an excellent first half century. Thank you all."

Here's his Twitter post in full:

Clerks Craze

In classic Kevin Smith style, his latest Twitter video is as earnest and sincere as it gets. The man has overcome quite a lot to reach this point in his career, in no small part thanks to his recovery from a debilitating heart attack in February of 2018. Doctors reportedly informed him that survival rates for similar cases are only around 20%. It's no surprise, then, that Smith is continuing to fold his own real-life experiences into his soon-to-be Clerks trilogy.

The first movie, filmed back in the early '90s at the New Jersey convenience store that Smith was employed with at the time, borrowed heavily from his life. The film went on to become a cult classic of sorts, bringing Smith into the indie scene and eventually leading to the rather more divisive Clerks 2. The proposed threequel underwent a production path full of stops and starts over the course of several years, but in July we brought you the news that Clerks 3 was officially a go with an even more meta perspective to it.

Filming for Clerks 3 has now begun and we'll be sure to bring you more updates as they come in. Here's the current synopsis for the film:

In Clerks III, following a massive heart attack, Randal enlists fellow clerks Dante, Elias, Jay, and Silent Bob to make a movie immortalizing his life at the convenience store that started it all.

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