So Maybe “The Clerks” Animated Series Is Coming Back Next Year?

There would be some complications.

Upcoming producer for the Howard the Duck animated series and fellow former Highlands denizen Kevin Smith is celebrating the 19th anniversary of Clerks: The Animated Series. For those that don’t know, the show was an animated adaptation for one of the true examples of underground film and helped burrow a lot of the avenues that underground filmmakers take today to make their passion projects to the next level. While the movie is definitely a classic, the animated series only ran for two of the six ordered episodes where it was subsequently canceled.

In a recent post, Kevin more or less teases a potential return for the show’s 20th anniversary which would be about 12 months from now. There are a bunch of obstacles in the way of making this happen.

1) Kevin made note of issues in ascertaining the rights to some of his best known franchises from the company formerly known as Miramax which was ran by the Weinstein brothers right up until Harvey became the center of controversy following numerous allegations of sexual assault. What was left of Miramax’s rights to franchises was then sold off to beIN media group making more complicated for Kevin to get those rights back.

2) Live-action follow up Clerks III was indefinitely postponed because Jeff Anderson (the voice of Randall) had decided to leave the project right around the time his former wife Lisa Spoonauer (voice of Caitlin Bree) had passed away which I hear took a lot out of Jeff. Kevin has said repeatedly that he would never recast the iconic role of “Randall” and I’m going to safely assume that includes any animated series.

3) Clerks: The Animated Series was an Disney-ABC television production. Contractually this means that this show probably couldn’t get new episodes to air anywhere else except for ABC or Disney-affiliated networks (and no I’m not counting the syndicated efforts on Comedy Central and Adult Swim). Fortunately, Disney has a bunch of networks and streaming services and could do just that on say FXX, Hulu, or even Freeform which is starting to toy with airing adult animated series like Bob’s Burgers, Family Guy, and others.

A revival of the Clerks: Animated Series would be killer, but we’d have to get past a few hurdles first. Read the post from Smith below:

 

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“BEAR IS DRIVING! HOW CAN THAT BE?” The ill-fated, quickly canceled CLERKS cartoon I made with later @kimpossible director #chrisbailey and later @veephbo genius @davidhmandel debuted 19 yrs ago on @abcnetwork! (For you kids, a network was a thing on which we watched shows before @netflix.) The fact that a l’il black & white indie film from #newjersey became a bonafide prime time cartoon seemed like a miracle – until the network cancelled us after airing only 2 of our 6 episodes (out of order, mind you). But those 6 eps have really stood the test of time! @dinipaul came up with the idea of a clip show for episode 2, so we could flashback to shit that never happened. @briancohalloran and #jeffanderson were fantastic as a far more animated Dante & Randal, and living cartoon @jaymewes matched his two dimensional counterpart perfectly. The late, great #lisaspoonauer, who played Caitlin in Clerks, also came back to reprise her role in a vocal cameo in ep 6. A pre-Pepper @gwynethpaltrow played herself and @realgilbert played Patrick Swayze. @danetheridge, who would later produce @thecwizombie and @veronicamars, played OddJob-ish publicist Mr. Plug. But @alecbaldwininsta playing our bad guy Leonardo Leonardo came from mad genius Mandel, who’d gotten to know Alec when Dave was a writer on @nbcsnl. Alec was not only a big catch for me and @samosier (as massive #glengaryglenross fans) he was a miraculous last minute save: Leonardo Leonardo looks like Hans Gruber because #alanrickman was originally going to voice the part. This all happened in 1999/2000, right on the heels of Dogma and 2 years before #jayandsilentbobstrikeback (in which Mandel makes a cameo double-fists coffee – a gag we repeat in the forthcoming #jayandsilentbobreboot). As per the description in the review attached, we did a Judge Reinhold as actual judge joke in our pilot. A decade later, when @arresteddevelopment did the same exact joke, we all felt a little vindicated. But not as vindicated as we’d all feel if the show came back to life for its 20th anniversary next year… #KevinSmith #clerks #cartoon #animation

A post shared by Kevin Smith (@thatkevinsmith) on Jun 1, 2019 at 10:04am PDT