OLIVIA MARNE
Vanessa Williams sung it, but I don’t think she meant it in relation to movie franchises.
I’m speaking about news today that a fourth – and likely final, considering Jackie Chan’s age – “Rush Hour” movie is in the works. Did they save the best for last? I doubt it, but that series sure does know how to print money.
Though he said he was retiring from action movies, Chan did an about face recently and suggested he’ll be doing a few more – and furthermore, a couple in Hollywood. You see, after the disastrous results of films like “The Tuxedo” and “Around the World in 80 Days”, Chan packed his bags and headed back to Asia where he’s been starring in the kinds of movies he made his name for – clever martial-arts pieces that don’t overshadow his skills with whiz-bang special effects or a wise-cracking sidekick. But seems he’s been encouraged to reunite with one of his wise-cracking sidekicks, Chris Tucker, for “Rush Hour 4” – the fourth in what’s inarguably his most popular film franchise outside of his home country.
Producer Arthur Sarkissan tells CraveOnline, “I’m trying to do it closer to how I did Rush Hour 1,” he told the outlet. “More down to earth. More gritty. Introduce two new characters and make it real the way the first one was. I personally was not happy with the third one. I thought 1 and 2 were very good. I think 3 got out of hand a little bit. It’s not a matter of just bringing them back to do another segment of that or a sequel to it by putting them in another city and having them bicker. I don’t want that. I want something new.”
Sarkissan has some ideas for the storyline.
“They kept the characters,” he says of that franchise, “They took them and they put them in a whole different world. They put them in the world of a heist movie and it worked… Maybe Chris is now married. Maybe Jackie is married to Octavia Spencer. I don’t know. Married to Chris’ cousin. They live in Shanghai. Chris goes out to visit them… I want something energetic.”
As for whether Brett Ratner, who directed the previous three films, will return for a fourth?
“He’s more than welcome to do it,” says the producer, “but he’s got to do it in the right way.”
Ouch!
In the same interview with Sarkissan, the producer tells Crave that he’s also just set James Mangold (“The Wolverine”) to direct the English-language remake of ’70s crime thriller “The Red Circle”.
Says the producer, “He’s from the world of the old school of movies. ‘The Getaway’, ‘The Wild Bunch’. I see him in that world. He loves movies. ‘3:10 to Yuma’, to me, was one of the best remakes ever. It’s very difficult to top an original and I think he did that absolutely beautifully because I don’t think the Glen Ford/Delmer Daves version worked as well as the one he did.”
