Disgraced director Brett Ratner aims to shoot Rush Hour 4 this year – but Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan haven’t said yes yet. Amongst the many examples of corporate toadying towards the current President of the United States is, bizarrely, the decision to set the film Rush Hour 4 up at Paramount Pictures. Paramount is ... Rush Hour 4 hits problems, neither Chris Tucker nor Jackie Chan signed up
Disgraced director Brett Ratner aims to shoot Rush Hour 4 this year – but Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan haven’t said yes yet.
Amongst the many examples of corporate toadying towards the current President of the United States is, bizarrely, the decision to set the film Rush Hour 4 up at Paramount Pictures. Paramount is now owned by Skydance, in a deal funded in part by one of the richest men in the world, Larry Ellison. It seems that part of the cost of doing business, and getting the Paramount deal approved, involved finally greenlighting the Rush Hour sequel.
This is being directed by Brett Ratner, a man who has faced several allegations of sexual assault, and whose photograph appears in the Epstein files. You can read more about that here.
Ratner’s return to mainstream filmmaking came earlier this year with the odious Melania documentary, itself made to placate Donald Trump. Ratner had been trying to get Rush Hour 4 moving for years, but following the allegations against him, which are particularly horrible, no studio in Hollywood wanted to work with him. Well, until Trump came along anyway.
Paramount, then, had agreed a handsome $120m or so budget for Rush Hour 4, but Puck News is reporting a spanner in the works: both Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker have turned down their paydays. With the film due to go before the cameras later this year, the outlet suggests that Chan and Tucker have turned down a deal worth $8m apiece, less than half the $20m they got for Rush Hour 3.
Should Paramount blink and pay their bill, that’s going to knock the budget for the movie closer to $150m. But then, it’ll make Donald Trump happy, which bizarrely in part feels like the object of the exercise.
Presumably this’ll all work out and a deal will be struck, not least because neither Jackie Chan nor Chris Tucker have anything anywhere near as lucrative in their in tray to our knowledge. Bottom line: this isn’t going to be cheap. Furthermore, should it be, say, 2028 before the film makes it to cinemas anyway, the man it’s in part designed to impress will be heading towards the White House exit anyway. Strange world, this.
More on Rush Hour 4 as we hear it.
