Trump's ‘Rush Hour 4' Tests a Hollywood Comeback in China

President Donald Trump assembled an impressive entourage for his visit to China. From Elon Musk to Nvidia's Jensen Huang, some of the world's most powerful business leaders arrived in Beijing seeking trade deals and investment opportunities.

But there was one unexpected passenger aboard Air Force One: Brett Ratner.

The controversial filmmaker, who recently directed Melania, the Amazon documentary about first lady Melania Trump, used the trip for a very different purpose. Ratner spent time in China scouting locations for the long-gestating Rush Hour 4, a sequel that has lingered in development for nearly two decades.

Paramount green-lit the project last November after Trump reportedly lobbied Larry Ellison, the tech billionaire and major shareholder in the studio's parent company, to revive the franchise. The film is set to mark Ratner's return to narrative filmmaking for the first time since 2017, when his career stalled following allegations of sexual misconduct and harassment, which he has consistently denied.

What has drawn less attention, however, is that Rush Hour 4 will mark Hollywood’s first return to large-scale filming in the country since Transformers: Age of Extinction in 2014.

The COVID-19 pandemic flipped the script on Hollywood's box-office strategy of appealing to China. Now, Rush Hour 4 is testing the water for whether Hollywood can meaningfully reestablish a foothold in the world’s largest film market.

How COVID Killed Hollywood’s Chinese Dream

Before 2020, China was central to Hollywood's global strategy. Its vast cinema audience helped turn blockbusters into billion-dollar franchises, and studios routinely tailored films to appeal to Chinese regulators and moviegoers alike. The 2013 Marvel flick Iron Man 3 added domestic star Fan Bingbing into scenes just for the Chinese release. The time-travel thriller Looper, released in 2012, set scenes in Shanghai in a future where Americans emigrated to China to find work.

That strategy, however, has largely collapsed.

The COVID pandemic effectively wiped out the market overnight. Filmgoers eventually did return to movie theaters, but Chinese audiences have never again returned en masse for Hollywood productions.

In the past five years, tighter government controls, worsening United States-China relations, and a dramatic surge in domestic filmmaking have reshaped the landscape. Hollywood films now face stricter quotas, heavier scrutiny and diminishing box office returns in what was once their most promising overseas market.

The numbers tell the story. In 2018, five Hollywood films grossed more than $200 million each in China. Since 2020, only two have crossed that threshold. When Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom was released in 2018, it made $261 million in China alone. Last year's Jurassic World: Rebirth only made $79 million.

"To be blunt, Hollywood's golden-goose market is cooked," Chris Fenton, a former media executive and a member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, tells Newsweek.

"The math doesn't lie. There were many weekends where 80 cents of every dollar came from American titles. Now, Hollywood is lucky to achieve five percent of the total market."

Aynne Kokas, the author of Hollywood Made in China, told Newsweek: "Since the expiration of the U.S.-China Film Agreement in 2017, which guaranteed a floor for the number of films entering the Chinese market, it has been more difficult for Hollywood studios to secure release spots in the market."

"This has been paired with increasing sophistication of both local filmmakers and local audiences who increasingly want to see local content," Kokas added.

China’s Film Industry Rises While Hollywood Suffers

When you think of the highest-grossing movies of all time, the likes of Avatar and Avengers: Endgame come to mind. Few filmgoers will know that the 4th-biggest movie of all time is a title virtually unknown in the West: Ne Zha 2.

The animated fantasy sequel, released last year, grossed a colossal $2.26 billion, marking the first time in a non-pandemic year that a Hollywood film had not been the number-one movie at the global box office. Almost all of its gross was made in China. Before that, a movie had never made more than $1 billion in a single market.

"It proves what we all knew many years ago: China will be the largest film market in the world," Fenton said. "What we didn't know is that our films wouldn't benefit from that growth."

Ne Zha 2 is a symbol of how Chinese-made films can now compete and sometimes outperform American ones. It is a trend that has continued into 2026, with three Chinese titles among the top 10 box-office performers so far this year.

"There has been an increase in high-quality local content," Kokas said. "Local content often appeals more directly to local tastes due to shared points of reference and humor. Ne Zha 2 shows that the Chinese market can produce technically sophisticated content using local IP that can attract international audiences."

The boom in China's domestic film market comes as Hollywood grapples with an existential and economic crisis. The arrival of Big Tech as a significant Hollywood player, the streaming boom, monthslong strikes by actors and writers in 2023, and the looming Paramount-Warner Bros. Discover merger have all contributed to a marked decline in production, higher unemployment in the industry and viewing habits shifting to the comfort of one’s home over the theatrical experience.

Box office revenue in the U.S. and Canada last year was $8.87 billion, barely above 2024 and more than 20 percent lower than pre-pandemic levels.

The main reason is that considerably fewer people are buying movie tickets. 769 million tickets were sold in 2025, a tiny uptick from 260 million the year before. To put that into perspective, there was never a year between 1980 and 2019 when less than 1 billion movie tickets were sold.

The studios have stacked the slate this year in a bid to revive Tinseltown's fortunes, with highly anticipated blockbusters Toy Story 5, Avengers: Doomsday and Dune: Part Three all expected to help Hollywood achieve its biggest year since the pandemic. But without a domestic Chinese audience to target, there is no hope that the studios can ever achieve the same box office results they enjoyed a decade ago.

"There was a time when China was an essential element in the formula for hitting profitability," Paul Dergarabedian, a senior media analyst at Comscore, told Newsweek.

"Studios can no longer rely predominantly on China to deliver the box office dollars that can mean the difference between a hit and miss," he said.

Can Rush Hour 4 revive Hollywood’s fortunes?

Rush Hour 4 is now an experiment to see if Hollywood can reenter a market it has largely abandoned.

The original Rush Hour trilogy, released between 1998 and 2007, was built on cross-cultural appeal, pairing Hong Kong action star Jackie Chan with American comedian Chris Tucker in a series that moved seamlessly between East and West. The franchise was a hit, earning over $850 million globally. While the first two movies were partially filmed in Hong Kong, the series has never been shot on the Chinese mainland before.

Ratner's spokesperson, Victoria Palmer-Moore, said that during Trump's China trip, the director was scouting filming locations and holding meetings with crew, potential actors and Chinese distribution partners. That this happened as part of a delegation focused on trade and diplomacy suggests a convergence of entertainment, politics and soft power.

It is also one of the most effective ways for a Hollywood production to secure access to Chinese theaters. The country tightly controls the number of foreign films allowed into its market each year, with only 10 from Hollywood permitted under the quota system (a number China announced last year it would reduce as retaliation for Trump's tariffs).

One way around those restrictions is to structure a film as an official co-production with Chinese partners, with significant portions of filming in China, participation by a Chinese cast and crew and script approval from regulators.

"Brett Ratner's visit to China with Trump reveals an effort to enliven collaborative production using pre-existing IP that plays well across multiple international markets," Kokas says.

Still, she cautions: "There is a long way to go from scouting locations to successfully distributing a film."

The big question is whether Rush Hour 4 can help turn the tide for Hollywood in China-or whether the viewing habits of the two countries will continue to diverge.

"It is possible that Chinese audiences may gravitate back toward Hollywood movies," Kokas says. "But with increasing distance between the two countries' entertainment ecosystems, it is a challenge."

2026 NEWSWEEK DIGITAL LLC.

This story was originally published May 20, 2026 at 5:00 AM.