Kevin Smith Says He Still Wants to Make More Episodes of the ‘Clerks’ Cartoon

While only six episodes were ever made and just two aired before ABC canceled the show, Kevin Smith’s Clerks: The Animated Series still has a cult audience, particularly among those who came of age watching Dogma. As May 31st marks the 25th anniversary of the short-lived cartoon’s debut, Smith shared his thoughts with me on a potential Clerks cartoon reboot last year aboard the first-ever Cruise Askew Kevin Smith Fan Cruise.

Fans will be happy to know that Smith would reboot the series “in a heartbeat,” and added that it’s something he talks about all the time. However, he went on to clarify the difference between a new cartoon based on Clerks and a reboot of Clerks: The Animated Series. “There’s a very narrow path by which that version of the Clerks cartoon can come back,” he said. “Disney owns it because Walt Disney Animation made it, oddly enough. They’d never put it on Disney+, obviously, so the only place it could be is Hulu.”

When Solar Opposites debuted on Hulu in 2020, Smith felt Clerks would be a good companion series. “Clerks is turn-key, you don’t have to design it, and we had a great crew of writers like David Mandel and Brian Kelley,” Smith explained to me. “So, I asked my agent to reach out to Hulu to see if I can pitch Clerks.”

The agent went to Disney and came back to Smith with some discouraging news: “He called me back within 10 minutes and he was like, ‘Nah, they don’t want to meet.’ I said, ‘Did you tell them what I wanted to meet about?’ He said, ‘Yes, and specifically they did not want to meet about the Clerks cartoon. They said, right now, they’re not thinking about any animation beyond that one cartoon, so there’s no point in having the conversation.’”

Smith, of course, could only read that as a hard no. “If we were to do a Clerks cartoon, we’d have to start from scratch. It can’t look like that, it can’t have the characters Leonardo Leonardo or Mr. Plug. The only way we could do a Clerks cartoon that resembled the six episodes of Clerks: The Animated Series is through this one narrow channel on Hulu. Or Disney+ now has R-rated shit on there, so there’s a path, but outside of this cruise we’re on, I don’t think anyone is clamoring for the Clerks cartoon.”

But again, Smith still believes it can work, which may give some fans hope. And since this is Clerks we’re talking about, it’s only fitting to close out on a Star Wars quote. So let’s go with one from Jyn Erso in Rogue One: “We have hope. Rebellions are built on hope.”