HUH?!

‘Rush Hour 4’ Starring… Diddy?

<p>A billboard has popped up in Hollywood for the movie sequel <em>Rush Hour 4 </em>starring Sean “P. Diddy” Combs and Byung-hun Lee. What the hell is going on?</p>

Someone really wants to make Rush Hour 4 happen. (And for once, it’s not Chris Tucker.)

But are audiences ready for Rush Hour 4... starring Sean “Diddy” Combs and the Korean Brad Pitt/new Asian Terminator, Byung-hun Lee?

A billboard advertising the (fake) buddy cop sequel popped up in tourist-congested Hollywood this week with Combs and Lee replacing Tucker and Jackie Chan for a fourquel titled Rush Hour 4: Face/Off 2.

So stealthily did the ad materialize, not even the bartenders downstairs at Hollywood Blvd. watering hole The Rusty Mullet noticed it had been installed on the rooftop of their building, they told The Daily Beast. Neither did anyone at New Line, the studio behind 1998’s Rush Hour and its two sequels.

We hear it may have something to do with an upcoming Funny or Die sketch—this, of course, coming on the heels of his fabulous parody “Downton Diddy,” which received over a million views. Diddy did post a photo of the ad to Instagram with no explanation but the tagline “The Rush is back,” stirring speculation that he might actually be serious about making Rush Hour 4.

As for the real Rush Hour 4, it’s been in development since 2012, when producer Arthur Sarkissian confirmed as much during TCAs, saying, “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.” The third one, which was critically panned, saw Chan and Tucker go to Paris and inexplicably co-starred Roman Polanski.

It appeared to have stalled, then last August Chan claimed that he was offered Rush Hour 4 but is holding out for a legit script. “Lately they want to make Rush Hour 4,” Chan said during an audience Q&A in London promoting his film Chinese Zodiac. “I said, ‘No, show me the script first. I don’t need another Rush Hour 4. You need Rush Hour 4. Show me the script.’ I don’t want to do a rubbish script just because they want to make the movie.”

Diddy, meanwhile, is currently in the studio with Kanye West working on his new album, Making Money Mitch, his first LP since 2010’s Last Train to Paris.

That being said, we’d probably pay $15 to see Diddy throw a few kung-fu kicks and rip off his shades and yell, “I’m the president, I’m the emperor, I’m the king. I’m Michael Jackson, you Tito. Your ass belongs to me.”

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Jen Yamato

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