'Rush Hour', 'Bad Santa', 'Super Troopers' Sequels Edge Closer to Being

Belated sequels to Rush Hour, Bad Santa, and Super Troopers are coming, whether you want them or not.

Remember how The Weinstein Company and Miramax made that deal to produce sequels to such obvious missed franchise opportunities as Shakespeare in Love, the Richard Gere-Jennifer Lopez ballroom drama Shall We Dance?, and Bad Santa? Well, after hiring writers John Phillips and Johnny Rosenthal to bang out two, completely-independent scripts for the Bad Santa sequel, the studios have apparently decided to go with Rosenthal's take--sort of--hiring Hot Tub Time Machine's Steve Pink to direct from a Rosenthal draft he'll re-write. Billy Bob Thornton is expected to reprise the lead role and make it even gaunter than ever.

Also nearing a sequel: the 2001 dorm room cult comedy Super Troopers. Speaking to ComingSoon, Broken Lizard troupe members Jay Chandraskehar and Kevin Heffernan claimed they've written a sequel script and have received positive feedback from Fox Searchlight, but added that legal issues and accounting problems unresolved from the first film are thus far keeping the film from moving forward. They also said they might do Potfest as a sequel to the gateway drug that was Beerfest. Though the idea started as a joke, apparently the current dry spell of pot comedies has Willie Nelson, Cheech Marin, and Snoop Lion (né Dogg) all desperate to cameo, so now the sequel is looking increasingly likely, yet another stoned comment that somehow became way too real.

Meanwhile, in the world of police race relations, Rush Hour producer Arthur Sarkissian told Crave:

"I am working on Rush Hour 4 right now with Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan. I'm trying to do it closer to how I did Rush Hour 1, more down to earth, more gritty, introduce two new characters and make it real the way the first one was. I personally was not happy with the third one. I thought 1 and 2 were very good. I think 3 got out of hand a little bit. It's not a matter of just bringing them back to do another segment of that or a sequel to it by putting them in another city and having them bicker. I don't want that. I want something new."

"Maybe younger, maybe Chris is now married, maybe Jackie is married to Octavia Spencer, I don't know. Married to Chris's cousin, they live in Shanghai, Chris goes out to visit them. I don't know, I want something energetic."

Well, just so long as it's more down to earth and gritty. Like the first one.