Paramount Will Distribute Next RUSH HOUR and It’s Messy

First the news. Deadline confirmed that Paramount would take over distribution on the upcoming fourth Rush Hour movie. The original trilogy were New Line properties and thus Warner Bros. handled distribution. “They are distributing on behalf of Warner Bros for a double-digit percent distribution fee,” says Deadline. This is a somewhat fascinating development in that Paramount, as owned by David Ellison, is one of the bidders to buy Warner Bros. Discovery.

Evidently, many studios have passed on distributing the fourth Rush Hour, including New Line and Warner Bros. themselves. It may have something to do with how the movie is produced and directed by Brett Ratner, who helmed the previous three and produced via his RatPac production company. Ratner was accused of sexual assault in 2017. He sued for defamation in 2018 and both parties settled out of court.

Ratner’s last feature film was 2014’s Hercules starring Dwayne Johnson, but he recently directed a documentary about First Lady Melania Trump for which Amazon MGM Studios paid $40 million and will hit theaters on Jan. 30. This leads to another wrinkle which is that the Rush Hour films are, according to Semafor, the favorite movies of President Donald Trump.

Trump is also good friends with billionaire Larry Ellison, the third-richest man in the world and father of, you guessed it, David Ellison who now owns Paramount. POTUS supposedly pressed Ellison to revive classically male-driven action movies and specifically cited the Rush Hour films, which were, again, directed by the guy who just made a puff-piece documentary about the First Lady. So if Paramount does end up buying WBD, Ellison (who denies reports he’s taking money from Saudi Arabia to bolster the bid) could have the President of the United States in his ear telling him what movies to make.

As if all of this weren’t enough, there’s the Jackie Chan of it all. Despite making his name in Hong Kong, Chan has, since the 2010s, taken a hardline pro-Beijing stance, claiming calls for the former British colony to remain democratic should be silenced. And while he continues to appear in American films, such as playing Mr. Miyagi in the Karate Kid movies and voicing Splinter in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, Chan also makes films specifically for the mainland Chinese market which would safely fall under the banner of pro-government propaganda.

So, all of this to say, Rush Hour 4 is not the exciting prospect that it might have been even a decade ago.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Letterboxd.