Kevin Smith's 'Clerks III' hits major roadblock

For years, filmmaker Kevin Smith has been promising fans that he will be making a third Clerks movie. In fact, for a period of time, the sequel was to serve as his final movie, when he was going to be "retiring." While Smith has, indeed, written a sequel to the movie, it appears that the movie has hit a major roadblock.

Smith told Screen Daily that "[The Weinsteins] 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."

While this certainly does not mean that this is the end of the road for the movie, it does put Smith in a trickier situation, as the Weinsteins likely still own the rights to the Clerks franchise for at least some time. As Bob Weinstein said, they will still distribute the movie, so Smith could find financing himself, or just use Kickstarter or IndieGoGo to bring funds to the movie. He could also try to find a way to bring the budget down, to a price that the Weinsteins would feel comfortable spending money on it.

Considering that Clerks II cost $5 million to make, plus whatever the studio spent on marketing, only to come in sixth place in its debut, it is clear that the last Clerks movie wasn't exactly the slam hit the studio wanted, even though the movie pulled in $24 million domestically. So, now that Smith wants to spend even more on a sequel, it is easy to see why the money men wouldn't want to pitch in. But, with that in mind, it is still disappointing for fans to hear.

Even if Clerks III doesn't happen, however, Smith appears to have a couple other films he could still make. One of which includes a spin-off to Tusk, his upcoming horror movie that is set to hit theaters in the later half of the year. The upcoming spin-off is, supposedly, titled Yoga-Hosers.

“Like Tusk, [Yoga-Hosers] sprang out of a podcast. 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.”

That's not all, however, as Smith has also announced projects like Helena Handbag and a Christmas horror movie Anti-Claus along the way as well. So, even if Clerks III fails to be, it doesn't seem like Smith will be sitting around at home twiddling his thumbs.

This is not the only time in the past couple days that Smith has found himself getting into headlines, as his reaction to his recent Star Wars: Episode VII set visit has been making rounds over the weekend as well.

Image courtesy of INFevents.com