Kevin Smith Announces "Clerks 3" As His Last Film

Although he's been eyeing a retirement from filmmaking for some time, Kevin Smith revealed today, via his Twitter account, that plans for his final big screen output have changed. He originally planned for his final two-part feature to be his Warren Zevon-inspired hockey film, Hit Somebody. That project is now moving forward as a six-hour television miniseries and Smith plans to, instead, make his final feature film Clerks III. Smith says that plans for a third Clerks film will move forward, "the minute Jeff Anderson signs on." Anderson, along with Brian O'Halloran, played Randal Graves and Dante Hicks (respectively) in the original 1994 Clerks. A pair of young slackers working minimum wage customer service jobs, they reprised their roles for a short-lived animated series and then returned to the big screen in 2006's Clerks II. Hit Somebody, meanwhile, is set entirely in the 1970s and closely follows Zevon's ballad about a Canadian goon (a defenseman known for his hitting) who dreams of scoring a goal. Specifics have not yet been announced, but Smith says that the story will now be broken down into six hour-long episodes. Although there's no specific timeframe listed for either project, it's possible that Clerks III could target a 2014 release, taking advantage of the original film's 20th anniversary. (comingsoon)