Broken Lizard fans have been waiting for the comedy group to make a sequel to their 2001 breakout hit Super Troopers. But then again, the members of Broken Lizard have also been been waiting for the opportunity to make the film. Unfortunately, what the group has euphemistically been calling a “legal thing” has been holding things up from moving forward.

Broken Lizard member Kevin Heffernan spoke with GuySpeed (via The Wrap) and indicated that that “legal thing” may now be a thing of the past -

There will be a Super Troopers sequel. We put it off for a while and then came back to it. We wrote the script and handed it in to Fox and now we’re just negotiating the time and the place and hopefully shoot it some time this year. I have to start growing my mustache now.

The group has been working on a screenplay for Super Troopers 2 for some time. Back in 2009 while doing the publicity rounds for Broken Lizard’s The Slammin’ Salmon, Heffernan and troupe-mate Steve Lemme confirmed to me that they had been working on a script “over the course of the last few years.” They also squelched the rumor that the film was going to be sequel with them playing their Super Trooper characters’ fathers.

There’s been no official word yet from studio Fox Searchlight confirming that they have a script in hand, but we’ll be keeping an eye out for news.

In terms of how quickly films go from being an idea someone has to having a script written and getting the go ahead to start production, Super Troopers 2 is not going to be getting any speeding tickets.

The sequel to comedy troupe’s 2001 break out comedy has been rumored for many years now and in December 2009, members Kevin Heffernan and Steve Lemme confirmed to me that they were indeed working on a script for a follow up, but that it wasn’t ready yet. A little over two years later and it finally appears that the screenplay is ready to go but there is one other detail that they have to iron out before being able to start shooting.

Heffernan and Broken Lizard member Jay Chandrasekhar told IFC the news this past weekend while at the SXSW festival in Austin to promote, The Babymakers, the group’s new film in which they star as a group of guys who help out their friend and his wife who are unable to conceive by stealing back his last remaining donation he made to a sperm bank.

“We’re hoping to make Super Troopers 2 eventually,” Chandrasekhar, who has also served a s director on a number of the group’s films, stated. “We’ve written the script and as soon as we figure out a little sort of legal thing with Fox, I think we’ll hopefully get a chance to make that.”

But even if the group’s next project isn’t Super Troopers 2, Chandrasekhar, Heffernan and Lemme, along with Broken Lizard’s other members Paul Soter and Erik Stolhanske have plenty of other projects in the pipeline for fans including Freeloaders which the group is producing and which is currently in post-production.

Universal has picked comedy troupe Broken Lizard’s latest screenplay Rogue Scholars as well as a second, unnamed project. The studio has agreed to co-finance the scripts with the Motion Picture Corporation of America through its studio feature film investment fund.

It’s a good movie for Universal. Both projects are being described as “low budget,” so there is not much investment on their part. And while Broken Lizard’s films have never set the box office on fire, the group has a loyal fan base which fuels strong home video sales.

Rogue Scholars will see the five members of Broken Lizard – Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter and Erik Stolhanske – as five goofy college professors who run afoul of both the students and the administration. When I chatted with Heffernan and Lemme back in December he described the script as “a reverse Animal House.”

While everyone is being tight-lipped about the title of the deal’s second script, we can make a couple of guesses about what it may or may not be. The project that their fans are looking forward to the most is probably a sequel to their biggest Super Troopers. And while the group has stated that they are working on a script for a sequel, Super Troopers was released by Fox Searchlight so presumably they have first dibs on the sequel. Likewise, their script The Babymaker, in which Heffernan would play a man who recruits his friends to break into a sperm bank to steal back some donations he made years previously in order to get his wife pregnant, is currently in development at Warner Brothers. Another project they have talked about for some time is The Greek Road, in which Heffernan and Lemme would play Greek philosophers Plato and Socrates on a road trip being interfered with by the Gods, portrayed by the other three members of the group. What makes it doubtful that this could be the mysterious second film is that Greek Road had previously been passed on by Warner Brothers who felt that the film was a too expensive for their tastes.

That does leave two possible known projects that this mystery second film could be. The first is Pot Fest, first promised at the end of the group’s 2006 Beerfest. The second is a script about a former NFL linebacker called Nutcracker. The group has already shown the script to their Slammin’ Salmon co-star Michael Clarke Duncan who liked the script. Lemme told me back in December that the group and Duncan are currently looking for a way to put the project together. Could this be it?

Via The Hollywood Reporter.

Earlier today, I sat down and chatted with Broken Lizard’s Kevin Heffernan and Steve Lemme about the comedy troupe’s latest film, The Slammin’ Salmon, hitting theaters tomorrow. I’ll have the majority of the discussion for you then, but in the meantime, I thought I’d share what was discussed about some of the other projects they have in the pipeline, including their newest project, Rogue Scholars.

Rogue Scholars- “The new one we’re writing [for Universal] is called Rogue Scholars, where we play college professors. We’re the authority figures and our nemesis are the students, who attack us. We get into a little tit-for-tat with them. You could say that it is Super Troopers on a college campus.” – Lemme

“Or a reverse Animal House.”- Heffernan

Nutcracker- “We just gave [Slammin’ Salmon co-star Michael Clark Duncan] a script that we wrote for a big menacing linebacker at the end of his career, called Nutcracker. We were doing some interviews in New York last week for our live show and Michael was telling us he used to be a dancer. I don’t mean at strip clubs. But he used to take ballet. We were like ‘We have a script called Nutcracker’ and he didn’t believe us. We didn’t believe him that he did ballet. But we gave him the script and he loved it. So we’re going to figure out what to do with that.”- Lemme

Freeloaders- A group of friends who live for free in a rock star’s house suddenly find themselves scrambling when the singer decides to sell the home.

“That’s a movie we’ve produced. It’s done and they’re submitting it to film festivals now. Adam Duritz, the lead singer from Counting Crows, is a fan of our films and he had some guys that he worked on a script with, somewhat autobiographical, and they wanted to make a movie in the same way that we made Super Troopers. They used our infrastructure and our crew. We helped with the script and have little cameos.”- Heffernan

The Babymaker- Heffernan would star in this story of a man who finds that he has become infertile and must retrieve the last remaining vial of sperm he donated in his younger, more viral days so he and his wife can have a baby.

“That was a project at Warner Brothers. I think its still there, possibly we could make it. It got eclipsed by a few things like Rogue Scholars.”- Heffernan.

“That would be Broken Lizard creative producing.”- Lemme

“And [Broken Lizard cast mate] Jay [Chandrasekhar] would direct.”- Heffernan

Pot Quest- As promised at the end of Beer Fest.

“While it well not be a direct sequel to Beer Fest, it will be a Broken Lizard, high concept –“ – Lemme

“- pot adventure”- Heffernan

The Greek Road- Heffernan and Lemme as Greek philosophers Plato and Socrates on a road trip being interfered with by the Gods, portrayed by the other three members of the group.

“We’ve come so close so many times to getting it greenlit. When we got our deal at Warner Brothers they said we’ll greenlight any movie you want. We said ‘Here it is! We’ve been dying to make this movie.’ We were talking about shooting it in Bulgaria, shooting it in India. We just couldn’t get there and we had [the less costly] Beer Fest so that was an easy decision [for the executives].- Lemme

“Sword and sandal epics are making a come back. Because of 300 there are other ways to shoot it now from when we were trying to get it made.”- Heffernan

Super Troopers 2- “Over the course of the last few years, whenever we get some free time we go back and work on a script. So we’ve been writing the script over the course of a couple of years. We just want to get it right. We’re about four drafts in now.”- Heffernan

“Next week we’re sitting down to start work on the new draft.”- Lemme

On the film being a prequel to the original-

“That was something that happened in one interview where we joked about it and were like ‘oh that would be pretty cool. The 70s and we could play our dads and drive our hot rods…’ But actually, with that one we’re going to pick up right where the story left off.”- Lemme

“I think people want to see what happens next. Pure sequel. There was a push to do a sequel very quickly after the first movie came out, but we wanted to make some other movies to do some other things. It’s a blast when we sit down to write it. When you write a script from scratch, you have to make up the characters and the way they talk. But when you revisit somebody, you’ve already established that so it’s a very simple writing process. ‘Mac would say that… Farva would say that… That’s hysterical.’”- Heffernan

“I’m 50 pages in to the new draft and just nice seeing those guys and how O’Hagan is reprimanding everybody and the obnoxious things Farva is saying. It’s going to be fun, but we want to be careful with that.”- Lemme