The president’s bizarre insistence that the dead Jackie Chan-Chris Tucker series should return resulted in a shock announcement this week. Maybe there’s more to come …
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o far, Donald Trump’s control of the media has involved a lot more stick than carrot. Thanks to a combination of outbursts and indiscriminate legal threats, the powerful figures at the centre of a rapidly consolidating industry find themselves with little option but to bend to the president’s every demand. Unfortunately, what he’s demanding is Rush Hour 4.
Just a few days ago, this seemed like a weird overreach, like when Trump used a keynote speech at a McDonald’s to demand more tartare sauce on Filet-O-Fish sandwiches. But in this case it really happened. Trump told majority Paramount Skydance shareholder Larry Ellison that he wished someone would make Rush Hour 4, and now Rush Hour 4 is being made.
So now we find ourselves in a situation where the president of the United States is dictating the sort of films that should be made. The problem with this, of course, is that Trump has famously awful taste in movies.
