Brett Ratner joined Donald Trump’s latest trip to China and flew aboard Air Force One as the president headed to Beijing for meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping, with the director planning to use the visit to scout possible filming locations for Rush Hour 4.
The trip gives Ratner a public role around a movie that would reunite him with Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker, and it comes as Paramount Pictures handles distribution duties for the action-comedy without directly financing or producing it. Questions about Ratner’s involvement were directed toward RatPac Entertainment.
For Ratner, the timing matters because Rush Hour 4 would be his first narrative feature since multiple sexual misconduct and harassment accusations surfaced against him in 2017. He has denied all allegations. The China visit also keeps him in the same orbit as Trump after Ratner recently made the documentary Melania, which followed first lady Melania Trump during preparations for Trump’s second inauguration.
That documentary has already made Ratner a more visible figure inside Trump’s media world. Amazon MGM Studios released Melania earlier in 2025, and it reportedly earned more than $16.4 million domestically before later arriving on Prime Video. In January, Ratner brushed off suggestions that the film was designed to restart his Hollywood career, telling The Hollywood Reporter, “That’s ridiculous,” and adding, “I’ve been waiting to make Rush Hour 4; that was my strategy.”
Trump has also reportedly pushed the project forward behind the scenes, encouraging billionaire Larry Ellison to support Ratner’s plans after David Ellison took control of Paramount in 2025. The original Rush Hour was Ratner’s breakout success in 1998, and the trilogy went on to earn more than $850 million worldwide, which is why the studio still sees value in bringing back a franchise that once worked at a global scale.
The friction now is obvious. Ratner is being given a path back into a major studio-linked action film even though the allegations that pushed him out of Hollywood remain unresolved in the public view, and the movie is moving ahead without Paramount taking on the full financial risk. That makes Rush Hour 4 less a simple comeback story than a test of how far a franchise can travel when its director’s past still shadows every step.
