"Harold & Kumar 4" in Works with John Cho and Kal Penn Expected to Return

Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, and Josh Heald, the creators behind the worldwide Netflix sensation Cobra Kai, have closed a deal to write a new installment of "Harold & Kumar", the buddy comedy franchise that was popular in the early 2000s.

Hurwitz and Schlossberg will also direct the entry, which is being developed at Lionsgate-owned Mandate Pictures.

John Cho and Kal Penn are presumed to reprise their roles as Harold and Kumar, although no deals have been made with the actors. It’s unclear if Neil Patrick Harris, who played a pivotal role in the franchise, will be back.

Hurwitz, Schlossberg, and Heald will produce via their Counterbalance Entertainment banner, alongside Greg Shapiro, who produced the original movies. Mandate, which also produced the original trio, will again produce. 

The movie will be one of the first projects produced by Nathan Kahane, Lionsgate’s current motion picture group president who is stepping down at year’s end and returning to Mandate to be a producer.

Dina Hillier will executive produce for Counterbalance. 

The original Harold & Kumar, directed by Danny Leiner, follows to two young men, Korean American Harold Lee and Indian American Kumar Patel, who embark on a road trip to the Northeast burger joint named White Castle to satiate their munchies after they smoked drugs. But with the nearest White Castle miles away, they find themselves on a series of increasingly bizarre adventures, including getting arrested by racist cops, getting high with a cheetah, and picking up a hitchhiker who turns out to be famous TV actor Neil Patrick Harris, on cloud nine.

The pic became a hit and spawned two sequels, 2008’s “Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay” and 2011’s “A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas.”

Penn has long expressed a desire to return to Harold and Kumar’s world.

“We would love to do a fourth movie. John Cho and I text about it all the time,” Penn told Variety in 2020. “Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg — who created and wrote all three movies in the franchise — we all would love to do one. I think we all, thankfully, have the blessing of being really busy right now and want to find the right venue and the right timing.”