Sequel in the works for 1994’s indie ‘Clerks’

Kevin Smith is making another convenience store run.

The writer-director of “Dogma,” “Chasing Amy” and “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” has begun work on a sequel to “Clerks,” his homemade indie classic from 1994.

That $27,000 movie, shot at night in a store where Smith worked, chronicled the adventures of Dante and Randal, two guys who talk about life, death, sex and movies while working at neighboring stores.

The sequel, titled “The Passion of the Clerks,” picks up 10 years later and is “about what happens when that lazy, 20-something malaise lasts into your 30s,” Smith said.

“Those dudes are kind of still mired, not in that same exact situation, but in a place where it’s time to actually grow up and do something more than just sit around and dissect pop culture and talk about sex,” he said.

A new 10th-anniversary DVD of “Clerks” debuts Sept. 7, and Smith said working on that three-disc set inspired him to write about what became of those characters.

Smith is also writing the screenplay for a movie version of “The Green Hornet” but no longer thinks he will direct it. The “Clerks” movie has moved to the top of his to-do list.

So far, Smith said he has gotten only positive responses from the people who have read the script, so he decided to move forward with it.

Both Jeff Anderson, who played the combative video-store worker Randal, and Brian O’Halloran, who was the besieged-by-strangeness convenience store employee Dante, are signed on for the sequel. So is Jason Mewes, who will return as stoner Jay, the “hetero life-mate” of Smith’s stoic Silent Bob.

The original was shot pre-dawn, and most of the actors worked for free and then went straight to their day jobs with little or no sleep.

“This time around we’ll afford ourselves the luxury of nice, 12-hour days,” Smith said. “And people can get paid.”