Donald Trump, Paramount, and the Future of Rush Hour: Why This Franchise Won’t Stay Quiet
Donald Trump, Paramount, and the Strange Afterlife of the Rush Hour Franchise
Donald Trump reportedly lobbying Paramount for more Rush Hour has pushed the long-dormant buddy-cop franchise back into the news cycle, blurring the already thin line between politics, celebrity fandom, and studio decision-making. At a time when Hollywood is obsessed with familiar IP and legacy sequels, the idea of a former U.S. president nudging a major studio about Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker feels both absurd and perfectly on-brand for 2025.
Beyond the headline novelty, the story raises bigger questions: What does Rush Hour even mean in the current cultural climate? Does a new installment make creative or commercial sense? And how does a figure as polarizing as Trump affect the way audiences might receive any revival of the action-comedy franchise?
What the Report Says: Trump, Paramount, and More Rush Hour
According to the AV Club report, Donald Trump has been lobbying Paramount executives to pursue more Rush Hour—a move that fits neatly with his long-documented love of broad studio comedies and big, accessible action movies. While the specifics of the conversations are not fully public, the framing suggests a mix of fan enthusiasm and the kind of informal access that high-profile figures routinely wield in Hollywood-adjacent circles.
Trump’s pop-cultural preferences have always skewed toward the maximalist and middle-of-the-road: splashy musicals like The Phantom of the Opera, blockbuster spectacle, “event” TV. Against that backdrop, Rush Hour is a logical fit—high-energy, globally recognizable, and rooted in the kind of broad, crowd-pleasing humor that was dominant in late-’90s multiplexes.
“[Trump] loves the huge action movies and comedies of the late ’90s and early 2000s, and Rush Hour sits right in that comfort zone.”
For Paramount, any external pressure—political or otherwise—lands on top of a more practical question: in a streaming-fractured, franchise-saturated market, does reviving Rush Hour in 2025 actually move the needle with audiences?
How Rush Hour Became a Late-’90s Blockbuster Staple
When the first Rush Hour hit theaters in 1998, it did something simple but potent: it fused Jackie Chan’s acrobatic Hong Kong action style with Chris Tucker’s fast-talking, improv-heavy comedy and wrapped it in a familiar buddy-cop structure. The result was a surprise smash that pulled in both family audiences and action diehards.
- Rush Hour (1998): The original fish-out-of-water pairing of Detective Lee and Detective Carter, set between Hong Kong and Los Angeles.
- Rush Hour 2 (2001): A glossier, more confident sequel that leaned into Chan’s stunt work and Tucker’s riffing in Hong Kong and Las Vegas.
- Rush Hour 3 (2007): A Paris-set capper that showed franchise fatigue but still delivered familiar beats for fans.
Culturally, the trilogy arrived in an era when the “odd-couple cop” formula still felt fresh enough, and Hollywood was only just beginning to grapple with more explicit conversations about representation and stereotype. The films played heavily on culture-clash humor, often veering into caricature, even as they opened doors for a broader mainstream appreciation of Jackie Chan’s incredible stunt work.
When Politics Meets Pop Culture Nostalgia
The image of a former president lobbying for more Rush Hour is headline-ready, but it’s also part of a longer American tradition: political figures leveraging or flaunting their media tastes to seem relatable. In Trump’s case, his preferences—WWF wrestling appearances, reality TV, glossy Broadway, blockbuster cinema—have been central to his public persona since long before his White House run.
There’s also a strategic layer. Aligning with mass-market, nostalgia-driven entertainment can help sidestep polarizing policy debates and reposition a political figure as a kind of “culture consumer-in-chief.” When that enthusiasm is directed at corporate gatekeepers like Paramount, though, the optics become more complicated. Is it playful fandom, or a reminder of how uneven access to power can be when it comes to influencing what gets made?
Pop culture has always been a soft-power currency in politics; the difference now is how quickly those signals get amplified, memed, and weaponized online.
For fans, the bigger concern is less who makes the phone call and more what that call means for the creative direction of the franchise. Nobody wants a film that feels like a culture-war football instead of a breezy night out at the movies.
Could a New Rush Hour Actually Work in 2025?
The idea of Rush Hour 4 has floated around Hollywood for years. Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker have both, at different times, suggested they’d be open to revisiting Lee and Carter if the script and timing felt right. But 2025 is not 1998, and the buddy-cop template now comes with more baggage and higher expectations.
A successful revival would need to thread a delicate needle:
- Update the humor: The franchise’s culture-clash jokes would have to evolve beyond cheap stereotypes, leaning more into character-driven comedy and situational absurdity.
- Respect Chan’s legacy: At this stage of his career, Chan’s stunt work can’t simply repeat the past; it needs choreography that honors his physical limits while showcasing his inventiveness.
- Give Tucker something to play: Carter can’t just be a motormouth caricature; he needs a modern arc that makes sense for a veteran cop in a different policing and social landscape.
- Find a new story engine: Global crime and surveillance tech have changed dramatically since the early 2000s. A new plot has to acknowledge that shift without turning the film into a grim procedural.
The franchise’s original director, Brett Ratner, is no longer a viable option for a major studio release due to multiple misconduct allegations. That means Paramount would need a new filmmaker with both action chops and a strong comedic voice—someone who can reframe Rush Hour rather than simply imitate it.
The Case For and Against More Rush Hour
Stripping away the political noise, the question becomes: creatively and commercially, is more Rush Hour a good idea?
Why a Revival Could Work
- Built-in global audience: The original films performed well across multiple territories, and Chan’s international appeal remains strong.
- Nostalgia economics: Legacy sequels—from Bad Boys for Life to Top Gun: Maverick—have proven that dormant properties can roar back if handled carefully.
- Streaming runway: Even if a new film underperforms theatrically, it could find a long tail on streaming platforms where bingeable comfort content thrives.
Why It Might Be a Mistake
- Tonal whiplash: The franchise’s broad humor may clash with current conversations around policing, race, and representation if not thoughtfully updated.
- Franchise fatigue: Audiences are increasingly choosy about which legacy IP they’ll show up for; “just because it exists” is no longer enough.
- Political baggage: Any perception that the film exists partly because of a politician’s lobbying could turn a lighthearted project into a culture-war flashpoint.
Paramount’s IP Strategy and the Rush Hour Question
For Paramount, the Rush Hour conversation exists within a broader struggle to keep pace in the IP arms race. While the studio has reliable tentpoles like Mission: Impossible, Transformers, and Star Trek, it faces heavy competition from Disney’s Marvel–Star Wars machine and Warner Bros.’ DC and monster-verse offerings.
Reviving a known, moderately priced action-comedy brand can look appealing on a spreadsheet: mid-budget, strong global awareness, and cross-generational appeal. But the track record for these kinds of reboots is mixed at best, and studios are learning—sometimes painfully—that online nostalgia doesn’t always translate into ticket sales.
It’s worth remembering that studios are pitched ideas like this constantly—from agents, from producers, from stars, and, occasionally, from famous fans with political clout. The fact that someone as high-profile as Trump reportedly weighed in says less about a guaranteed greenlight and more about how permeable the walls between politics, fandom, and Hollywood have become.
Anyone curious about the current status of the franchise or its key players can keep an eye on official channels and film databases such as IMDb’s Rush Hour page, which tend to reflect real movement—writers hired, dates penciled in—long before any presidential lobbying makes headlines.
So, Do We Actually Want More Rush Hour?
The irony of the Trump–Paramount story is that it may end up saying more about 2025 than about Rush Hour itself. We live in a moment where a nostalgic action-comedy from 1998 can become the center of a discourse triangle: political influence, corporate calculation, and fan desire, all orbiting the same piece of IP.
Whether a new Rush Hour happens will ultimately depend less on who picks up the phone and more on whether someone can crack a script that justifies the reunion. If that happens—and if Chan and Tucker genuinely want back in—there’s a version of this movie that could work: one that leans into aging partners, changing cities, and a smarter, sharper take on culture clash.
Until then, the trilogy remains a time capsule of late-’90s studio filmmaking: messy, energetic, crowd-pleasing, and deeply of its moment. The bigger question is whether Hollywood, and its newly vocal fans in high office, can resist the urge to turn every memory into a product—or whether we’re destined to keep chasing the next nostalgic rush.
