During his long career, American film director Kevin Smith mostly has worked on projects which never progressed beyond the pre-production stage under his direction. Some of these projects are officially cancelled and scrapped or fell into development hell.

Long before Clerks, Smith worked on an anthology movie consisting of four thirty-minute shorts.

Universal Pictures developed a screenplay in 1995 with Smith based on the 1970s television series of the same name. But, by 1998 the outing never materialized and has been passed on to other studios. His script was remade into a limited comic book series titled The Bionic Man.

Following Clerks, Smith wrote a film called Busing (has also appeared as "Bussing") for Hollywood Pictures, a now-defunct Disney studio. It was described as "Clerks in a restaurant." The film was announced around 1994 and was intended to be part of the View Askewniverse. The film was not made, but a poster for it parodying the Clerks poster appeared at the end of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and on Millenium Faulken's bedroom wall in Jay and Silent Bob Reboot.

In 1996, Smith was offered three films to potentially rewrite for Warner Bros.; one of them was a film adaptation of The Outer Limits episode, "The Architects of Fear".

Smith was interested in working on the 2002 Scooby-Doo remake. He was offered a position by Turner Pictures to write a script in 1996 but Smith would only accept if his producer Scott Mosier agreed to write with him.

After Smith was hired to write a new Superman film, he suggested Tim Burton to direct. Burton signed on with a pay-or-play contract of $5 million and Warner Bros. set a theatrical release date for the summer of 1998, the 60th anniversary of the character's debut in Action Comics. Nicolas Cage was signed on to play Superman, with a $20 million pay-or-play contract, believing he could "reconceive the character". Producer Jon Peters felt Cage could "convince audiences he [Superman] came from outer space." Burton explained Cage's casting would be "the first time you would believe that nobody could recognize Clark Kent as Superman, he [Cage] could physically change his persona." Kevin Spacey was approached for the role of Lex Luthor, while Christopher Walken was Burton's choice for Brainiac, a role also considered for Jim Carrey and Gary Oldman. Sandra Bullock, Courteney Cox and Julianne Moore had been approached for Lois Lane, while Chris Rock was cast as Jimmy Olsen. Michael Keaton confirmed his involvement, but when asked if he would be reprising his role as Batman from Burton's Batman films, he would only reply, "Not exactly."

Filming was originally set to begin in early 1998. Burton hired Wesley Strick to rewrite Smith's script and the film entered pre-production in June 1997. Smith was disappointed, stating, "The studio was happy with what I was doing. Then Tim Burton got involved, and when he signed his pay-or-play deal, he turned around and said he wanted to do his version of Superman. So who is Warner Bros. going back to? The guy who made Clerks, or the guy who made them half a billion dollars on Batman?" When Strick read Smith's script, he was annoyed with the fact that "Superman was accompanied/shadowed by someone/something called the Eradicator." He also felt that "Brainiac's evil plot of launching a disk in space to block out the sun and make Superman powerless was reminiscent of an episode of The Simpsons, with Mr. Burns doing the Brainiac role." However, after reading The Death and Return of Superman, Strick was able to understand some of the elements of Smith's script.