Writer/director Kevin Smith let slip on his podcast Hollywood Babble-On (an entertainment/chat show co-hosted by Ralph Garman) that he had secured funding for the long-awaited film Clerks III. This is reportedly as a result of renewed interest following Smith’s recent horror/comedy Tusk.  

Smith made his film debut with Clerks in 1994; shooting the film for around $27,000 paid on various credit cards before selling the film to Miramax at the Sundance film festival. He went on to further successes with films such as Dogma, Chasing Amy & Jersey Girl before returning to Clerks with Clerks II in 2006.

The road to Clerks III has been long & drawn out; due in part to The Weinstein Company having first-look rights for the film as part of the deal they did for Clerks II. The Weinstein Company  finally passed on the project in July; offering a distribution-only deal and leaving Smith to look else-where for funding. He originally intended to release the film in 2014 to mark the 20th anniversary of Clerks but instead he made the smaller-budget film Tusk while waiting for funding.

Smith first started talking about Clerks III in December 2012 and shortly afterwards announced via Twitter that he had finished the script; revisiting many popular characters from the previous two films.

Clerks III is currently expected to begin production in mid-to-late 2015; with the Tusk follow-up ‘Yoga Hosers‘ still in production and the third film in his Canadian saga ‘Moose-Jaws’ in pre-production. It is not yet clear however what the source of the funding is or if the project has secured all of the funds it needs to go ahead.