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"Super Troopers 2" owes its success to the "Cambridge Analytica" of crowdfunding

We talked to the comedy troupe that crowdfunded $4.6 million to bring Super Troopers back to life.

The first "Super Troopers" pretty much set the bar for stupid cop movies. It’s endlessly quotable, even for people who haven’t seen the movie — if you’ve ever heard someone say “meow” in the middle of a sentence for no reason, you, too, have been touched by Super Troopers' loving embrace.

But 17 years later, was there a market for a sequel?

Broken Lizard, the comedy troupe behind the film, felt pretty confident there was — especially because fans kept coming up to its members in public and begging them for one.

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"So what’s weird is that somebody will start speaking to you, and I'm like, 'I must have had a fucking stroke because I don't understand what the fuck you're saying to me,'" Broken Lizard's Paul Soter told VICE News. “They're just repeating lines from Super Troopers or Beerfest. "And I'm like, 'OK … I don't know the movies that well.'"

The studios, though, weren’t so sure. Fox Searchlight agreed to distribute a potential sequel, but if "Super Troopers 2" was going to happen, Broken Lizard would have to come up with the money on its own.

The comedy troupe raised $4.6 million via crowdfunding site Indiegogo — but not without some help. The campaign's success is mostly owed to a guy behind the scenes who Broken Lizard fondly refers to as the “Cambridge Analytica” of crowdfunding.

VICE News hung out with Broken Lizard just before the movie dropped to find out how cult classics are getting reborn, with the help of crowdfunding and clever marketing.

This segment originally aired April 19, 2018, on VICE News Tonight on HBO.