Sad news for stoned man-children in hockey jerseys: Kevin Smith says that The Weinstein Company has passed on Clerks 3. The Weinsteins own the rights to the franchise, and have rights of first refusal on any sequels. Smith told Screen Daily yesterday that Bob Weinstein offered to distribute the film, but that Smith’s proposed budget of $6 million was simply too expensive for their taste. This will delay production on the slacker threequel, which was originally supposed to begin shooting in May.
However, that doesn’t mean 2014 will be totally Kevin Smith-free: Tusk, his podcast-spinoff horror movie about a guy who gets surgically transformed into a walrus, hits theaters later this year; his Christmas horror movie, Anti-Claus, has a cast and is in pre-production; and Smith is already working on a Tusk spinoff called Yoga-Hosers, featuring two characters who appear in Tusk for about five minutes in (surprise surprise) a convenience store. Look for the podcast about the spinoff to the movie spun off from a podcast early next year.