Kevin Smith had been promising to bring the curtain down on his directorial career with his next offering, the two-part feature Hit Somebody, but after announcing earlier this week that he’s decided to restructure the hockey comedy-drama as a six-hour TV miniseries, Smith has now revealed that his feature film swansong will see Dante Hicks (Brian O’Halloran) and Randall Graves (Jeff Anderson) heading back for one last shift in Clerks III.
“Since Hit Somebody is now gonna be a mini-series, yes – that leaves room for a new final flick before I retire from directing feature films,” said Smith on Twitter. “So with the Hit Somebody shift, the minute Jeff Anderson signs on, my last cinematic effort as a writer/director will be Clerks III.”
Smith has previously teased the possibility of a third Clerks movie on a number of occasions, and it should certainly provide a fitting conclusion to the director’s filmography, with the original Clerks having launched his career – and the ‘View Askewniverse’ – way back in 1994. It spawned a short-lived animated series, as well as the 2006 sequel Clerks II, which caught up with Dante and Randall ten years after their time at the Quick Stop, with the duo then flipping burgers at the local Mooby’s fast food joint.
Along with O’Halloran and Anderson, it’s surely a given that Smith and Jason Mewes will be back as Jay and Silent Bob, while you’d have to expect to see a host of View Askewniverse veterans popping up for one last hurrah, such as Scott Mosier, Walt Flanagan, Bryan Johnson, Jason Lee, Joey Lauren Adams, Ethan Suplee and Ben Affleck.