Trump Pushing Paramount to Revive Melania Doc Director’s Buddy Cop Comedy Franchise

(Photo by: Dennis Van Tine/Geisler-Fotopres/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images)

President Donald Trump personally urged Paramount’s owner Larry Ellison to bring back Rush Hour, the buddy-cop martial arts franchise fronted by Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker, according to new reports.

Ellison, a key political ally and major financial backer, is now a large shareholder at Paramount and inching toward a takeover of Warner’s storied catalogue. That gives the president, for the first time, a foothold in Hollywood’s creative machinery and leaves open the opportunity to revive the style of comedies and blackbusters common in the 1980s and 1990s.

First on the president’s list is Rush Hour, sources told Semafor, a franchise that started in 1998 but has been dormant since 2007. The movies were directed by Brett Ratner, who recently spent months filming the president’s wife for an Amazon documentary, Melania.

Over the years, sexual misconduct allegations against Ratner have hampered any effort by Warner to reboot the franchise.

The stars of the film have also been more positive than most about Trump’s presidency, Chan remarked after the 2016 election that people should “just give him a chance to try to change America and change the world.” Tucker told the press he wanted Trump to be “successful.”

Rush Hour producer Arthur Sarkissian, however, also boasts proximity to the president and runs a production company that filmed The Man You Don’t Know, which Semafor noted was a “glowing portrait of Trump that premiered at Mar-a-Lago in 2024.”

Another film that reportedly fits with Trump’s taste is the 1988 Jean Claude Van Damme film Bloodsport, which he has also reportedly pressed Ellison on a reboot.

Neither the White House nor Paramount commented on the reported discussions.

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