‘Rush Hour 4’ in works at Paramount after Donald Trump’s alleged intervention
Rush Hour 4 is set to speed ahead with production after Donald Trump allegedly called for the return of the franchise.
The original director, Brett Ratner, who has been accused of numerous instances of sexual assault and has not been active in Hollywood for many years, is reportedly set to return to direct.
It was recently reported by Semafor that Trump had set his sights on a revival of the classic action movie. It pointed to a larger project on his behalf, to revive the art of “raucous comedy and action movies” in a shake-up of the current Hollywood landscape.
The buddy-cop comedy featured Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker, who are also set to return for the new film. Ratner previously directed the previous three movies and had shopped the latest entry around Hollywood for years without success before Trump’s intervention.
However, Trump lobbied for the film to his friend and backer Larry Ellison, the largest shareholder of the new Paramount Skydance. Paramount Global settled a lawsuit with Trump earlier this year over the editing of a critical CBS interview with Kamala Harris.
As per The Guardian, Paramount has since secured funding and agreed to a distribution deal with Warner Bros. New Line, a banner of Warner Bros, previously owned the franchise.
Rumours of a Rush Hour 4 stretch as far back as 2022, when both Chan and Tucker revealed they had been in talks for the project. Nothing more came to fruition at the time.
This project will be a huge step in Ratner’s career after sexual assault allegations derailed his position in 2017. At that time, Melanie Kohler, a former employee of Endeavour Talent Agency, alleged that the director raped her at famed producer Robert Evans’ home.
Ratner sued her for defamation, and the two settled the case in 2018. However, in 2017, Kohler released a statement that expressed her hope that the director would be held “accountable for the way he’s treated the nobodies of the world or at least the way he treated me.”
Ratner’s most recent project was a documentary about Melania Trump for Amazon MGM Studios, owned by Jeff Bezos. This will arrive on January 30th, 2026.
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