Ahead of the release of Clerks III in theaters, writer-director Kevin Smith has revealed what his original plan was for the anticipated sequel. Capping off the trilogy, Clerks III will take the story back to where it all began by following Dante Hicks (Brian O’Halloran) and Randal Graves (Jeff Anderson) at Quick Stop Groceries. This time, the pair team up to make an indie film about their jobs as lifelong clerks in a way that’s similar to what Smith had done in real life with the first Clerks movie.

But going back to Quick Stop was not the plan that Smith had in mind when he wrote a previous screenplay for Clerks III. Speaking about the original script, per The Hollywood Reporter, Smith explained that the grocery store actually gets destroyed by Hurricane Sandy in the start of the film, forcing the characters to do something else with their lives with their second home no longer around. This is pretty reminiscent of Clerks II which saw Dante and Randal get new jobs at a fast food restaurant after Quick Stop gets burned down.

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Smith explains that Randal has a nervous breakdown following the destruction of Quick Stop. Randal copes by heading to a local movie theater to get an early spot in line for Ranger Danger, a film that won’t arrive until the following year. But as Randal waits in line, more and more people join him, eventually leading to the clerk becoming a de facto mayor of a parking lot village. He even winds up making his own Quick Stop.

“It opened on the evening of Hurricane Sandy. Dante and Randal were locked in a jail because the original version of Clerks III was the opening of Jay and Silent Bob Reboot where the cops come in and bust Jay and Silent Bob. All of them were arrested and there’s an interrogation scene and somebody comes in and says, ‘We gotta get ‘em out and put them in cells because it’s coming.’ And [the guys] are like, ‘What’s coming?’ ‘They’re calling it Sandy.’ They were locked in a cell all night long and they get out in the morning to find that the Quick Stop was destroyed by a flood.”

“Like a weird movement. A village sprouts up in the parking lot of the movie theater. Randal builds a lean-to version of Quick Stop, like a bodega-shanty version, and becomes the unofficial mayor of this town. It was a movie about dealing with grief.”

Clerks III Goes Back to the Quick Stop

     Lionsgate

Jeff Anderson may not have been a fan of the script, as he turned down the sequel when Smith presented it to him. Nowadays, Smith says that the biggest problem was that the story had gotten so far removed from what the original Clerks had been. After Smith’s real-life heart attack in 2018 completely changed his outlook on life, he also found new inspiration for an all-new direction for Clerks III that put the story back in the Quick Stop. Impressed with the new script, Anderson then agreed to return as Randal.

Clerks III will screen in theaters from Sept. 13-18 courtesy of Lionsgate and Fathom Events.

“It was so far-flung from Clerks. Mercifully, we never made it. And then suddenly, I had the heart attack and was like, oh, that would be a good backbone for this movie.”