Are We Going To See Clerks 3?

As it turns out, Kevin Smith’s “Tusk” is going to give us something besides crippling nightmares of Justin Long wearing a walrus suit.

The indie director claims, on his latest Hollywood Babble-On podcast, that the mere existence of “Tusk” got Kevin Smith the financing that he needed for “Clerks 3.” Smith begins the latest podcast attacking his audience about not supporting the movie.

“Tusk opened about as poorly as a movie can open,” Smith admitted. But the director quickly found the silver lining in the financial disaster, stating:

“Everything in my life would suck right now if I hadn’t made that movie. I’m back in movies now. I’ve got three lined up, and this is the f*****g grand news. Tusk was the absolute bridge to Clerks 3. Because of Tusk, I got my financing for Clerks 3. It was Tusk. It was people going ‘Holy F***! What else do you have?’ And I was like, Clerks 3. Done. So everybody that’s like, ‘He failed, he failed,’ thank you I failed into Clerks 3.”

Kevin Smith has been beating the drum for “Clerks 3” for a while now. He recently said that the screenplay for it is finished.

And yet, in that strange announcement, he describes the screenplay as “the Empire Strikes Back of what’s now become the Clerk Trilogy.”

Even though this is the third part, which should make it the Return of the Jedi of the trilogy. Right? Is this stoner math? Still, he says that he’s ready to go back to New Jersey “for the last time,” so there’s going to be some closure to the storyline.

You can’t tell the story of Kevin Smith without referring heavily to “Clerks.” It is the movie that kick-started Smith’s career as a writer-director, and while many will argue about how far Smith has come since the early days of the indie-talker-comedy, there’s no denying the impact that Clerks had on the industry and its rabid audience.

What could possibly happen in “Clerks3?” The convenience store was open once again at the end of “Clerks 2.” But knowing Smith’s mind, the possibilities are endless. So long as they don’t involve a walrus suit.