“It’s been an excellent first half century.

Thank you all,” Smith said.

Kevin Smithis going to be having a very happy 51st birthday.

The writer/director will celebrate the occasion by kicking off filming the third installment of his 1994 classic,Clerks.

“Today is my last day of being 50.

“It’s also another anniversary.

“It’s been an excellent first half century.

Thank you all.”

“It’ll be a movie that concludes a saga,” Smith wrote in anInstagrampost.

“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.

And it’ll be a movie called Clerks III!

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!

The plot of the film has connections to Smith’s own life.

So Dante and Randal makeClerks.

That’s the story ofClerks 3.”