Both Amazon & Sony Had Passed On “Rush Hour 4” When Its Package Was Still Being Shopped Around Hollywood. Skydance’s Film Chiefs Also Have Expressed Initial Misgivings About Distributing Movie With Brett Ratner Directing It But They Were Eventually Overruled By The Ellisons’ Trump-Nudged Greenlight.

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“Amazon executives were brainstorming a list of female directors in late 2024 for a documentary about Melania Trump, a project the company had bid $40 million to distribute.

What some of these executives didn’t know, according to people familiar with the deal, was that the first lady had already picked her guy: Brett Ratner, the director of the “Rush Hour” franchise. Once a major force in the movie industry, his career was derailed in 2017 over allegations of sexual assault and harassment, which he denied. There were no charges filed against him.

The return of Ratner, 56, is one of the latest examples of a vibe shift driven by President Trump’s desire to shape culture—from the Smithsonian Institution to the Kennedy Center—in his image. It’s a continuation of his crusade to erase what the president and his constituents saw as an ideology of political correctness gone too far, and an effort to turn back the clock on the “cancellations” that happened during the #MeToo era.

At Ratner’s peak, the Miami Beach-born director surrounded himself with a version of the old Hollywood he glorified. Now he is offering the Trumps some of those trappings in the form of a glitzy theatrical release for “Melania.”

The first lady’s decision to hire Ratner for her film helped the director engineer a Hollywood comeback by way of Mar-a-Lago—where Ratner has been living in an eight-bedroom home and spending time with the Trumps, people familiar with the matter said.

In the past week Ratner has been seen hobnobbing with such power brokers as Apple boss Tim Cook and Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy at a White House screening for “Melania,” which follows the first lady in the run-up to last year’s inauguration. A red-carpet premiere for the film is scheduled at the Trump-Kennedy Center Thursday night, and Amazon MGM Studios is set to release it Friday on more than 1,700 movie screens in the U.S. and Canada, before it hits the company’s streaming service.

“I look forward to showing the world what an incredible First Lady you are!” Ratner said in the caption of an Instagram post under a photo of himself with Melania at the White House screening.

Though the impact “Melania” will have at the box office is unclear, Ratner’s connections to the Trumps have already registered with Hollywood. Media executives have sought the filmmaker’s help in getting the president’s ear, namely for assistance in discouraging Trump’s idea to impose a 100% tariff on films produced overseas, according to people familiar with the situation.

Even Ratner’s upcoming projects are closely tied to Trump: Ratner filmed the president at the White House for a planned documentary-style project about the Abraham Accords, the administration’s 2020 pact designed to normalize relations between Israel and several Arab states. The project has self-help guru Tony Robbins, a friend of Ratner’s, as an investor and executive producer, and will also feature “other world leaders across the Middle East to examine a complex subject that is often misunderstood, polarized, and widely debated,” Robbins said in an email to The Wall Street Journal.

A bigger test of Ratner’s comeback efforts is already in motion: “Rush Hour 4.”

That movie, which Ratner had been working on since 2019, was passed over by the likes of Amazon and Sony, according to people familiar with the situation, but was only greenlighted late last year after David Ellison, son of Trump ally Larry Ellison, merged his Skydance Media production firm with the famed Hollywood company. Paramount’s new studio heads expressed misgivings about distributing a movie connected to Ratner, according to a person involved in the discussions, but the company is moving ahead.

Trump is said to be a fan of the franchise and Ratner’s work.

“President Trump was amazed by the beauty, glamour, and exceptional cinematography portrayed throughout the first lady’s new highly-anticipated film, and he is very proud of her,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote in an emailed statement. “He looks forward to attending the premiere at the Trump-Kennedy Center on Thursday evening.””

These idiots going all-in on a ‘vibe shift’ which never existed to start with