The version of Clerks III we’re actually going to end up with is radically different from Kevin Smith’s original vision. It turns out that when he was first writing the film, it was going to take place from pretty much the same starting point as 2019’s Jay And Silent Bob Reboot. That version of Clerks III would begin with Randal and Dante in jail (after Jay and Bob were arrested for peddling drugs out of what used to be the video store next to the QuickStop) right as Hurricane Sandy arrived in the New York region.
They’d leave the jail only to realize that the Quick-Stop had been destroyed in a flood. The film would see the people create a mock town in the parking lot of a movie theater, complete with a ramshackle shanty version of the Quick-Stop. The whole movie was apparently about “dealing with grief.”
Of course, that would plot is pretty far-out and doesn’t really seem like much of a Clerks movie. Smith struggled for a while to work out a plot that would fit better into the Clerks franchise when he had a near-fatal heart attack. He decided that was a good backbone for the movie, and got back to work.
Kevin Smith also spoke with The Hollywood Reporter, where he detailed a little more about the decision to switch the script up. He said:
It felt like Clerks III had to be at Quick Stop where it all began. That was able to feed everything else and once I gave Randal my heart attack, it was like, well, we will give him the movie as well. Then we were off to the races.
Clerks III will premiere first in New Jersey on September 4 and will get a wider release on September 13.
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