Writer/director Kevin Smith exclusively teases that the highly anticipated first Clerks 3 trailer could arrive sometime in Spring 2022. The film marks the ninth installment in Smith's View Askewniverse, an interconnected series of films connected primarily by his and Jason Mewes' iconic stoner duo Jay and Silent Bob. Smith has spent the better part of a decade developing Clerks III, first envisioning it as a potential Broadway play before turning it back into a movie and taking inspiration from his recent heart attack.
Clerks III will center on convenience store clerk Randal Graves as he survives a heart attack and decides to use the opportunity to make a movie with his friend Dante Hicks about their lives at the Quick Stop convenience store. The threequel will feature to returns of original cast members Brian O'Halloran as Dante, Jeff Anderson as Randal Graves, Marilyn Ghigliotti as Veronica, Rosario Dawson, Trevor Fehrman as Elias, Mewes as Jay and Smith as Silent Bob. Production on Clerks III kicked off in early August and finished a few months later and now Smith has some exciting news for those eager for the movie's arrival.
While speaking exclusively with Screen Rant to discuss the documentary Clerk. centered around his life, Kevin Smith offered an update on Clerks 3. When asked when the public could expect more information on the threequel, Smith confirmed the film is still aiming for a mid-2022 release and that the first trailer should arrive sometime this coming spring. See what Smith said below:
"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.' So we're doing that right now. 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."
Smith's tease of the impending arrival of the first Clerks III trailer should come as exciting news for those who are excited to see the filmmaker revisit his roots at the Quick Stop convenience store. With Smith having confirmed a few months back that he'd already finished the first cut of the film with a tease of Jay and Silent Bob outside the store, the timing certainly lines up for the trailer to come sometime in a few months. Additionally, with Smith discussing that the music is a key part of putting together a final cut for the film, it makes sense that bringing a trailer to audiences would wait until said end product is completely ready to go.
It's also interesting to note Smith's prediction that the first Clerks III trailer will highlight Dante and Randal recreating sequences from the original Clerks movie. The concept of the two characters producing a meta shot-for-shot version of the 1994 original, which Smith has teased in set photos for the film, has sparked the interest from longtime View Askewniverse fans, leaving many eager for the first trailer to show such sequences. While viewers wait for further news on Clerks III, the wait for the Smith-focused documentary Clerk. is nearly over as it's set to hit digital platforms on November 23.