Disgraced Hollywood filmmaker Brett Ratner is pressing ahead with Rush Hour 4, having flown to China on Air Force One to scout locations. Martial arts comedy sequel Rush Hour 4 still appears to be pressing ahead – despite April’s news that neither of its leads have signed up yet. The involvement of Jackie Chan and ... Rush Hour 4 | Brett Ratner has flown to China with Donald Trump
Disgraced Hollywood filmmaker Brett Ratner is pressing ahead with Rush Hour 4, having flown to China on Air Force One to scout locations.
Martial arts comedy sequel Rush Hour 4 still appears to be pressing ahead – despite April’s news that neither of its leads have signed up yet. The involvement of Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker would be pretty key to the sequel happening, you might think, but to date, neither star has publicly confirmed they’ve signed on the dotted line.
This doesn’t appear to have stopped disgraced Hollywood director Brett Ratner from going on a bout of location scouting in China. He hasn’t flown economy class, either; Ratner’s headed there with Donald Trump on Air Force One, flanked by a handful of other rich guys who’ve found favour with the US President.
According to The Guardian, Trump’s private jumbo is positively stuffed with billionaires, including Elon Musk, Tim Cook off of Apple, and financier Larry Fink. The group are headed to China on official summit business, with Trump due to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping. Ratner isn’t as wealthy as that lot, but he has managed to weedle his way into the Trump clan’s good graces.
January saw the release of Melania, a puff piece about the First Lady, Melania Trump, masquerading as a fly-on-the-wall documentary. Its 100 minutes of glossy footage largely consists of Mrs Trump getting in and out of cars, pouting and trying on hats, yet the budget was a logic-defying $40m, making it one of the most expensive pieces of non-fiction filmmaking ever produced. (To be fair, Triumph Of The Will was probably pretty expensive to make, too.)
Ratner, whose career was previously flattened by multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, has denied that Melania was his attempt at getting back into Hollywood (he also denies the allegations of sexual misconduct).
“If anything, [Melania] was a bigger risk because of the polarisation and subject matter,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “I didn’t do this to get me back into Hollywood. That wasn’t my strategy. I’ve been waiting to make Rush Hour 4 – that was my strategy.”
Ratner has had his wish granted. His belated buddy-cop sequel will be made for a reported $100m, and will be distributed through Paramount – a studio which now has direct connections to Larry Ellison, another billionaire Trump supporter.
It still seems baffling that Rush Hour 4 will ever get made, given the grim associations. But Trump clearly has a certain way of forcing things to happen, so who knows. We’ll keep you posted.
