Kevin Smith is going back to where it all began.

The Highlands-native filmmaker confirmed in an Instagram post Monday that "Clerks III," the latest follow-up to his game-changing 1994 debut film "Clerks," is happening.

Original "Clerks" leads Jeff Anderson and Brian O'Halloran are set to return as convenience store workers Randal Graves and Dante Hicks alongside Jason Mewes and Smith as lovable drug dealers Jay and Silent Bob.

"It’ll be a movie that concludes a saga. It’ll be a movie about how you’re never too old to completely change your life. It’ll be a movie about how a decades-spanning friendship finally confronts the future," Smith wrote.

Fittingly, as the original "Clerks" was shot at the Quick Stop and RST Video Store shops in the Leonardo section of Middletown, Smith said the film will mark "a return to the cradle of civilization in the great state" of New Jersey.

"To be great is to go on. To go on is to go far. To go far is to return. And we’re all gonna return to the scene of the crime!," Smith said.

The revelation occurred during a weekend signing session between Smith, Mewes and Anderson for ZSC Entertainment and Leeloo Multiprops, according to Smith.

In August, Smith hosted a staged reading of his never-produced 2015 "Clerks III" screenplay at the First Avenue Playhouse in Atlantic Highlands to support the renovation of non-profit space, with O'Halloran reading Dante's lines and Smith himself reading Randal.

The 2015 script was a bleak vision of life for Dante and Randal in their 40s, feeling of a piece with Smith's then-recent endeavors in horror cinema, "Red State" (2011) and "Tusk" (2014). Prior to the reading, Smith described this script as "the 'King Lear' of View Askew movies."

On Monday Smith said the version of "Clerks III" he now plans to film is a new screenplay that he started writing on Sunday night.

Jay and Silent Bob — who made a surprise cameo in Drake's 2018 "I'm Upset" music video — return to the big screen this fall with "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot."

The first entry in Smith's View Askew cinematic universe since 2006's "Clerks II," "Reboot" plays select cinemas Oct. 15 and 17 via Fathom Events before the "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot Roadshow" tour of screenings and question-and-answer sessions launches Oct. 19 at the Paramount Theatre in Asbury Park.

The "Reboot Roadshow" plays the Prince Theatre in Philadelphia on Nov. 7 and will bring Smith and Mewes to the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center in Manhattan on Nov. 9 as part of the New York Comedy Festival.

"I've traveled the world on the backs of Dante and Randal and Jay and Silent Bob; they're as real to me as raincoats," Smith told the Asbury Park Press in August. "I know they're fictional characters in a movie but those individuals — who, granted, I created — are responsible for presenting me to the world, giving me a job, giving me something to do for 25 years. So I feel like I owe them.

"'Jay and Silent Bob Reboot,' I get to pay back Jay and Silent Bob in a way of like (acknowledging that) these cats have taken me everywhere, so I'm giving them a movie where they get to do something special or grow up ... The same, I think, is owed to Dante and Randal."

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