After talk of a sequel, this iconic action trilogy is a streaming hit again

In one of the strangest Hollywood twists in years, the Rush hour the trilogy is suddenly everywhere Again. The three films… Rush hour (1998), Rush hour 2 (2001), and Rush hour 3 (2007) – entered into The Top 10 of Pluto TV this weekmarking a new wave of nostalgia for the mismatched police mayhem of Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker. And it happens at exact moment Rush hour 4 finally comes back to life – thanks, strangely, to a very unexpected source: the President of the United States, Home Alone 2 star, and South Park guest Donald Trump.

After nearly 20 years of blocked scripts, legal baggage and studio reluctance, Rush hour 4 officially moving forward. Deadline reports that Paramount will release the film in the United States, which Warner Bros. Discovery will oversee the broader franchise rights and will be the first major collaboration between the two studios since David Ellison took over Paramount, which will receive a double-digit fees for distribution in the United States. This unusual partnership alone would have made headlines in the film industry without Trump, let’s be real. But somehow the story gets even stranger.

Did Donald Trump really bring back “rush hour”?

Apparently… yes. According to information from Semafor, Trump personally urged the Ellison family to revive the franchise – a franchise he would have loved – while maintaining long-standing ties with the director Brett Ratner. Ratner recently directed an Amazon MGM documentary about Melanie Trump coming out on January 30, which appears to have strengthened these ties. If you feel like we’re all living in a simulation after processing the utter insanity of the previous few paragraphs, don’t worry, we feel the same way and we don’t know how awake we actually are right now.

For years, no studio wanted to touch the sequel, because bringing back the franchise meant bringing back Ratner, whose career collapsed after sexual assault allegations in 2017. Melanie Kohler. Although Ratner filed a defamation lawsuit and settled the matter in 2018, he remained radioactive in Hollywood — one of many cases of “career exile” that studios were simply unwilling to re-engage in. Out of nowhere, in August 2024, Ratner was reinstated as director and producer. New Line authorized the licensing of the franchise. Producer Tarak Ben Ammar rights obtained through Eagle Pictures, producer of the original series Arthur Sarkisian came back, and that led us to this wild situation.

THE Rush hour The trilogy is now streaming on Pluto TV.