Clerks II is among the new movies coming this week to Tubi TV, a completely free and ad-supported streaming service. The platform, which tends to have shorter leases on movies and TV series than bigger, subscription-driven apps, nevertheless manages to put together a compelling lineup month in and month out, and the new releases for February 2021 include not just the Kevin Smith-directed sequel (which will soon be the middle chapter in a trilogy), but other geek-friendly properties like My Little Pony: The Movie, the comic strip adaptation Annie starring Jamie Foxx, and the graphic novel adaptation Road to Perdition, which featured Superman & Lois star Tyler Hoechlin in his earliest comic book role.
Clerks II, which stood for years as the final film in Smith’s View Askewniverse until the release in 2019 of Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, picked up with Dante Hicks (Brian O’Halloran) and Randal Graves (Jeff Anderson) twelve years after the events of Clerks. That day wasn’t the long-term wakeup call for the pair that it might have seemed to the audience, and the two slackers, now middle-aged, find themselves working in fast food after a fire burns down the convenience and video stores where they had once held court.
This month’s new releases also include TV series like Alias, 24: Legacy, Bunheads, and Pitch. Tubi also focuses heavily on content that is inexpensive to license, such as documentaries and live music performances, meaning that you’ll find everyone from Genesis and The Beatles to Elvis and David Bowie represented. Some of the bigger recent releases include the Denzel Washington-starring Unstoppable and the Gerard Butler vehicle Gods of Egypt.
After years of development and multiple drafts, Kevin Smith’s Clerks 3 will finally go in front of cameras in the near future. Smith has previously broken down the overall plot of the film, and a tweet revealed that the new movie will (unsurprisingly) take place almost entirely at Quick Stop. Smith has also taken to Instagram a bunch this year to post some of his movie memories, including ‘artifacts” from Clerks.
Smith also celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Clerks cartoon last year. The director took to Twitter to share Consequence of Sound‘s “Definitive Oral History” of the Clerks: The Animated Series. Smith was joined by writer Richard Day, co-creators/writers Scott Mosier and Dan Mandel, Miramax Television’s Billy Campbell, Jason Mewes (the voice of Jay), Brian O’Halloran (the voice of Dante), and more to chat with the site about making the series.
Clerks III is set to go into production following the completion of Twilight of the Mallrats, which means principal photography could begin sometime in 2022.