“Just waiting for New Line to cut that check,” says Tiny Lister after a conversation with Ice Cube while recording the latest radio spot for the Coors Light Coldest commercials.
“[Cube] turned the script in about six weeks ago for the new Friday,” revealed the actor ready to ride the beach cruiser once again as Deebo in the fourth installment of the popular franchise.
The 54 year-old actor, vocal about his Christian faith-based walk, has intertwined Gospel scriptures into some of his recent character roles, but he believes Deebo, to Lister’s preference, will remain true to form in the newest Friday. “Cube ain’t showed me the script yet … but Deebo is going to be evil … I taught the devil how to be the devil ... sleep with your lights on America,” warns Lister who today speaks to many youth and preaches the message of Jesus Christ, who he credits to be “the real gangster.”
In what Lister describes as “some of his best acting,” the actor’s credits later in 2012 will be further from the devil’s domain and include a “movie with Dean Cain, that’s called Doorway to Heaven.” The film, “shot in Utah,” which may become a television series, “[is] coming on the Hallmark Channel around Thanksgiving time.”
And if things going according to plan, the end of November is when Lister anticipates the new Friday project coming to a wrap. “[Cube] said he was going to fast-track Friday,” explained Lister surmising filming to begin, “realistically around late September … and we’ll shoot all the way into Thanksgiving.” Moreover, Lister foresees a probable theatrical release “by the third week of next year” but “if it don’t make this year, that means we are going to be shooting right after the first of the year, January and they are going to be fast-tracking it for April [2013].”
As far as casting Lister offered, “Me, Terry Cruz, we all going to be working together … [Cube] is going to work hard to get all three cast.” Regarding the return of Chris Tucker, the most notable absence from the last two films in the trilogy, Lister offered, “I just pray that God handles all of it; I don’t want to get into what I think and what I believe. I just leave it in God’s hands and everybody going to be back and it will be the best Friday.”
Should details to recast the Rush Hour star remain “smokey” and prove to be futile, there may be still be future hope to hear Tucker's trademark "daaaamn" in the franchise as Lister explains, “The way Cube is going to do it, he said, he is going to always do Fridays for the rest of his career.” Lister went to further explain, “I look at it more like the Fast and Furious and The Dark Knight, the Batman franchise; it got a facelift; and that’s what he going to do with the Friday franchise.”
