Under a Trump administration, no one is ever truly “canceled.” In fact, if you’ve been shunned by your former friends and colleagues over a scandal, you may just have a fast-track to Washington. After all, what does this president do better than rage against the media for attacking him over things he claims he never said or did?
Hence the return of disgraced Rush Hour director Brett Ratner, who was accused of sexual assault and harassment by six women at the height of the #MeToo reckoning in 2017, including actresses Olivia Munn and Natasha Henstridge. Ratner denied the allegations, but Warner Bros. cut ties with his financing and production company, and he left the movie business behind. In September 2023, he immigrated to Israel. (Ratner is a friend of Benjamin Netanyahu and has posted pictures of himself with the prime minister on his Instagram account.)
But Trump’s 2024 reelection brought an important opportunity. For his first feature since the allegations surfaced, Ratner shadowed Melania Trump in the days before the inauguration, gathering footage for a documentary on the First Lady called Melania. It will premiere in theaters on Jan. 30 and later stream on Amazon, which paid $40 million to license the vanity film and a similar limited docuseries. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos donated $1 million for Trump’s inauguration, has dined with him at Mar-a-Lago, and, during the 2024 election, spiked The Washington Post‘s endorsement of presidential candidates altogether rather than backing Trump’s opponent, Kamala Harris.)
Now it appears that Trump has returned the favor, urging supporter Larry Ellison to revive Ratner’s dormant Rush Hour franchise at Paramount, according to reporting from Semafor. Ellison does not have a formal role at the studio but wields significant influence there as a major shareholder and the father of CEO David Ellison.
A fourth installment of the culture-clash buddy-cop series starring Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan, which came to an end with Rush Hour 3 in 2007, was reportedly shopped around for years without success. Ratner’s involvement as director and producer on such a project made it a particularly tough sell. Yet with Trump’s encouragement, Rush Hour 4 finally has the green light at Paramount, which will distribute it on behalf of Warner Bros., a company it is currently in the running to acquire. Tucker and Chan are said to be on board for this latest outing; representatives for the actors did not immediately return requests for comment.
The deal offers Ratner a path back into mainstream Hollywood, though it remains to be seen whether the Rush Hour brand of racial humor will hold the same appeal it did for audiences nearly 30 years ago. Then there’s the matter of the martial arts stunt work that features in these films: Chan still headlines the occasional action flick, but at 71, the Hong Kong legend probably won’t be making the kind of moves he had at his peak.
The premise of a fourth Rush Hour movie produced at Trump’s behest came in for a good amount of scorn on social media. “Get ready for the dumbest possible state-controlled media,” Puck News entertainment-insider columnist Matthew Belloni wrote on X after confirming the news. Others joked about Trump picking up an executive producer credit. One X user mused, “Is Trump trying to revive Brett Ratner’s career because he’s a fan of the Rush Hour movies… or is it because he’s a fan of disgraced sexual predators who move to Israel?”
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Some, however, saw the upside. “Allowing Trump to transition full time into producing mediocre buddy comedies would, frankly, be a win for the Republic,” wrote Sonny Bunch, culture editor at The Bulwark.
Earlier this year, Chan fielded a question about the possibility of Rush Hour 4 while walking a red carpet. “Ask the studio, ask the director, ask the writer,” he replied. “I’ve been waiting, otherwise Chris and me [will be] 100 years old.” Ratner posted the clip on Instagram, writing: “Whose [sic] ready for RUSH HOUR 4!”
The answer, evidently, was Donald Trump, who has demonstrated one of the strangest imaginable uses of presidential power in pushing for a sequel already turned down by numerous studios because of the director’s unsavory reputation. Whether it’s his love for the chemistry between Tucker and Chan, his yearning for films that aren’t so “woke,” or sympathy for Ratner as a man who has been accused of sexual misconduct himself, he has seen to it that Rush Hour 4 will screen in cinemas across the nation.
After that, he’ll have to get started on the Oscars campaign.
From Rolling Stone US
