While it might not have opened to rave reviews or box-office riches, it seems that Kevin Smith’s Toronto International Film Festival entry Tusk might have opened some doors anyway.  The Midnight Madness award runner-up has spurred interest in Smith’s future projects, including the final installment in the Clerks trilogy.  

Smith’s horror comedy, well-received in Toronto but struggling to attract moviegoers, has at the very least put him back on Hollywood’s radar. In a recent episode of his Hollywood Babble-On podcast, Smith credited Tusk for getting his work noticed again, a decade after Clerks II was released.  The original Clerks, the tale of two bored cashiers in New Jersey and their hijinks, is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year with a special vinyl soundtrack release set to drop in November.

Meanwhile, Smith is excited about the possibilities opening up in his career.  As he said in the podcast, everyone was asking “What else do you have?’ And I was like, ‘Clerks III’, done. So everybody that’s like, ‘He failed, he failed,’ thank you I failed into Clerks III. So, never trust anybody when they tell you how your story goes, man. You know your story. You write your own story.”

Members of the cast of the first two films, including Smith, Rosario Dawson, Jason Mewes, Jeff Anderson, and Brian O’Halloran are expected to reunite for the new film.