Kevin Smith's plans for retiring, staying at home, and slipping into a really roomy pair of shorts have been put on hold for the sake of telling the full dramatic arc of Clerks.

Smith had previously expressed the desire to do only one more feature, that being his The Goon-like hockey film Hit Somebody, based on the Warren Zevon song of the same name. Only problem is, that film has now apparently expanded to six hours of hockey dialogue that is all too good to cut, which makes it pretty hard to put in theaters, even if he does go around showing it himself. So now, just as Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back ended up not quite being the View Askewniverse finale it was originally pitched as, Hit Somebody will no longer be Smith's final directorial effort: now Hit Somebody will be a six-hour miniseries, and, per Smith's own words, "with the HIT SOMEBODY shift, the minute Jeff Anderson signs on, my last cinematic effort as a writer/director will be CLERKS III." And thusly, Kevin Smith will still get his official, premeditated "last cinematic effort." And he will also get his Roots, apparently.