Now this is one strange piece of movie news — Vin Diesel has told the site ComingSoon during press for his upcoming sci-fi actioner “Babylon A.D.” that he plans to direct a 20-minute prequel to the upcoming fourth installment in the “Fast and Furious” series, which he is currently shooting. According to the Diesel himself, the short, I guess you’d call it, would re-unite him with Michelle Rodriguez’s character, perhaps to flesh out their relationship ahead of the events of part 4. Also in the prequel, Sung Kang’s character from “The Fast and Furious 3: Tokyo Drift”. I haven’t a clue how this thing is going to work, and apparently neither does Vin Diesel; or at least, he’s not telling.

Says Comingsoon:

Vin Diesel, who stars in next Friday’s Babylon A.D., told ComingSoon.net today that he is directing a 20-minute prequel to Fast and Furious, the fourth installment in the Universal Pictures franchise.

Diesel will star in the prequel along with Michelle Rodriguez reprising her role as Letty and Sung Kang returning as Han. Diesel didn’t say how the prequel would premiere; it could be on a DVD, online, TV, etc.

The guys at ComingSoon aren’t exactly known for their wordiness or need to speculate pointlessly about a topic (and they call themselves movie bloggers!), so they didn’t really elaborate beyond the above. Best guess is that this thing will probably be saved for the DVD release. Giving away a 20-minute movie for free ahead of the movie seems a bit overly generous on the studio’s part.

“The Fast and Furious 4″ returns to cinemas June 5, 2009 until the direction of Justin Lin, who also directed the previous installment, “Tokyo Drift”. The fourth movie is rumored to be very faster and, er, even more furiouser than previous movies.