Kevin Smith Says Weinstein Passed on 'Clerks 3'; Talks 'Tusk' Spinoff 'Yoga Hosers'

Before Kevin Smith started adding new projects left and right, like the upcoming horror movie Tusk, his next film was intended to be Clerks 3. He had hoped for shooting to being last May but obviously that didn't happen, and it made one wonder if the decision had been made to release it as a novel like Smith briefly considered. And maybe that will ultimately be the route he goes because the latest update is not at all promising.

Speaking with ScreenDaily, Smith says Harvey Weinstein, who has been one of Smiths' biggest supporters over the years, turned down Clerks 3....

Smith: "....they passed. I went in with a $6m budget and they were, like, ‘Oh no Kevin, this is too high’. Bob offered us distribution but they weren’t going to finance it."

So what does this mean? A Kickstarter campaign for a beloved franchise like Clerks would probably reap lucrative results, but as of now Smith hasn't said one way or another what he will do.  Clerks 2 made about $24M back in 2006 and cost about $5M with double that for marketing. That's not bad for such a small movie but is it the kind of thing where more people would turn out for another one? Probably not. It's only for the die-hards at this point.

When he's not busy possibly drumming up fake scripts for superhero movies, Smith has a lot of other stuff on his plate to consider. One of those is apparently a Tusk spinoff titled Yoga-Hosers that would shoot later this year and center on two supporting characters...

Smith: “There are two characters in a convenience store in Tusk that you see for five minutes, very much Ronsencrantz and Guildenstern. I’ve built a whole movie around them and I have brought one of the other characters from Tusk back.”

He also has the holiday horror The Anti-Claus (formerly Come to the Krampus) coming up, so he's plenty busy and certainly not on the verge of retirement as he once claimed.