I'll be interested to see how this pans out... The thing that worked with the Rush Hour movies (or at least the first 2) was the comedic timing between Tucker and Chan. Jackie Chan is very funny, both in script and body language. His martial arts choreography has always had an element of humor to it. For Rush Hour (the series) to work, they will have to find someone who can do justice to not only the action, but the comedy as well, without it looking like a bad copy. Only Chan can do Chan, in my mind, so whomever gets the nod will have to find a way to make the character their own. Or they could to a straight take on it and make it just another police procedural with the added element of martial arts and parkour (sp?)..
CBS already sorta did this 16 years ago with Martial Law, a series that debuted just a week or so after Rush Hour hit theaters. The show was built around Sammo Hung, who was Jackie Chan's frequent co-star and action choreographer, and thus was pretty much the closest they could get to Chan himself -- though he was no sloppy seconds in the action department, being amazingly skilled, quick, and agile for someone of his bulk and age. At first he worked with a couple of relatively bland, Caucasian cops as well as a Chinese-American relative played by Kelly Hu; but midway through the season, Arsenio Hall was brought in as a recurring character and ended up becoming a series regular and Sammo's permanent partner, in hopes of emulating the character dynamic of Rush Hour (although Arsenio is infinitely more watchable and charismatic than Chris Tucker). The problem was that Sammo wasn't fluent in English and delivered his lines phonetically, so he didn't give much of a performance. The second-season producers tried to make this an advantage by redefining him as a wise stoic, an enigmatic man of few words. But apparently Sammo felt they reduced him to just a "fighting machine" and so he refused to do a third season. Which is a shame, since I felt the show really came together in season 2. I really wish they'd release it on DVD.
Then you must have no problem with fingernails on a chalkboard or dentists' drills. Which I suppose is something to be envied.
Chris Tucker can be.... "funny" but in the right doses and right mix. In parts of "The Fifth Element" he was... "humorous" and in other parts not so much (see: him screaming during the explosions in the ballroom on the cruise ship.) The first couple Rush Hour movies were pretty funny, the third one not so much. In those movies Tucker is... "tolerable" but it's certainly very understanding how some would find him grating.
When the show started, Sammo was the resident martial arts fighter. Then out of nowhere, all the other characters were suddenly expert fighters. I didn't like that. It was clear that they were trying to retool the show. I didn't know that Sammo refused to come back. I always wondered what happened to the show. It just disappeared.
^Yes, there were definitely some retoolings along the way. Bringing in Arsenio Hall midway through the first season was the first retooling; then season 2 brought in a new creative staff and virtually ignored season 1 altogether aside from some token references to the season-finale cliffhanger (whose resolution was never even explained). But this was one of those rare cases in television where the network-mandated retools actually improved the show. I liked the writing and characterizations much better in season 2. And they wisely kept the most effective members of the cast (Hung, Hall, and Hu) while letting go of the blander ones (Louis Mandylor and Tom Wright), and made the new captain (Gretchen Egolf) an engaging character in her own right. And I don't mind if the other characters gained martial-arts skills of their own, since that's what we watched the show for anyway. And it's reasonable to assume that Sammo was giving them lessons between episodes.
Why not just cast Chris Tucker for the show? what is doing these days? I'm sure he could use he paycheck
^If they do, then I won't be watching. Besides, what would be the point without Jackie Chan? He's the real draw. Of course, that raises the question, who would they get to play his character in the show?
Who knows? Probably some generic martial artist guy. The problem American studios have always had with Chan, though, is they see Chan as just another Chinese karate man. He isn't. He's a Chinese Buster Keaton.
He can do drama. he was great in the new Karate Kid movie. I would love to see him in more serious roles.
Knowing how they sometimes do things in the industry, I wouldn't be surprised if they got Seth Rogen to play Tucker's role.... and then I would be completely disinclined to watch. I could more easily watch Chris Tucker as opposed to that stoner, one trick pony.
^I dunno, if anything it's more common these days to see black actors cast in roles that were originated by white actors -- Will Smith as Jim West, Ving Rhames as Kojak -- or as comic-book characters who were originally white -- Kingpin, Nick Fury, Heimdall, Johnny Storm, and a bunch more. There is an unfortunate tendency still to cast white actors as characters of just about every race but black, e.g. Asian (The Last Airbender), Native American (Johnny Depp as Tonto), Latino (most of the leads in Starship Troopers), pr Middle Eastern (Christian Bale as Moses), but casting white actors as originally black characters isn't something I've seen much in recent years, except Col. Tigh in the Galactica reboot.
I don't think it will ever see the light of day. CBS last year was going to have a Police Academy series that was supposedly really good and a continuation of the movies. For some reason it never happened. I have a feeling the same will happen here. Or if it does get made we will just have a Koran and a black guy solving crimes. Pretty much H5O with more black guys.
^Assuming you mean "Korean," why choose that nationality? Jackie Chan is from Hong Kong, and so was his character in Rush Hour.
Yes, I mean Korean. And what does his movie character have to do with anything? I'm going Korean because it's CBS the land of white people and Koreans. Plus once they cancel H5O they can hire a lot of that cast.