The Broken Lizard comedy troupe returns as they follow in the footsteps of Mel Brooks and Monty Python with a period satire based in medieval France. The trailer for the new Hulu comedy, Quasi, has just dropped from Searchlight Pictures. The troupe, who is known for their past outings, including Super Troopers, Beerfest, and The Slammin’ Salmon, now takes on a satirical look at the famous story of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
The official synopsis reads,
A hapless hunchback yearns for love, but finds himself in the middle of a murderous feud between the Pope and the king of France when each orders the hunchback to kill the other.
This film was written by the Broken Lizard crew and is directed by Kevin Heffernan. The comedy is produced by Richard Perello and comes from Searchlight Pictures for a release on Hulu courtesy of their distributing partnership. Quasi stars Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, Erik Stolhanske, and Adrianne Palicki.
The film will coincidentally be following another recent Hulu comedy period piece with History of the World Part II, which is a sequel to Mel Brooks’ 1981 comedy, History of the World Part I. A lot of the gags in the trailer will surely draw comparisons to classics, such as Robin Hood: Men in Tights and the infamous Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
The director, Kevin Heffernan, spoke about doing this film at a Super Troopers reunion at Vulture Festival 2022 where he addresses the Monty Python influence and inspiration. “We got to wear stupid wigs and do bad accents and do a Monty Python kind of thing.” Heffernan also spoke about the genesis of this project, “While we were working on Super Troopers 3 with Searchlight, we said, ‘We have this other movie that we like,’ and we gave them the script and they really loved it. We said, ‘We have this little window, we’d love to shoot it.’ And so we did — we went and shot medieval France right up in Santa Clarita.”
The movie will be available for streaming on Hulu on 4/20.