We all know Jackie Chan. He’s cheeky. He’s loveable. And he kicks ass.
With over 200 movies under his belt, there was one in particular that took his acting career to the next level: Rush Hour.
Released in 1998, it was Jackie’s first major breakthrough in Hollywood. Despite its success, he admitted that he didn’t like Rush Hour and almost gave up on the American Market:
“I tried to get in the American market a long time ago, after ‘Big Brawl’, ‘The Cannonball Run’, and ‘The Protector’, [but it didn’t] work,” he told Yahoo’s Role Recall. “Nobody knows who this little Chinese guy is, he speaks no English. I was disappointed. ‘No more American market, I speak no English’”
Luckily for us, his manager begged him to do just one more movie where terrible English was okay since the cop was from Hong Kong and new to America. Jackie finally said yes.
We were blessed with Rush Hour, but after filming he said it was terrible and that was his last attempt:
“Terrible movie. They don’t allow me to do my own style [of action]. The English, I’m not good. Chris Tucker’s English, I don’t understand. Terrible movie!”
Jackie headed back to Asia and thought that was it, but to his surprise, his manager called and said it was a”big hit!” Not only that, but the audience was roaring with laughter at the premiere.
The rest, as they say, is history. After the Rush Hour trilogy, he made a name for himself in Hollywood and they started to take him seriously.
Jackie confirmed that Rush Hour 4.
“The script probably at the end of this month will have a second draft and next year, [we’ll] probably start,” Chan said. “If… Chris Tucker agrees.”
“For the last seven years, we’ve been turning down the script, turning down the script,” he explained in the interview. “Yesterday, we just agreed.”
“Rush Hour 4” is scheduled to start filming in 2018. Sounds like the perfect time to binge watch some Jackie Chan, ya’ll feel me?
Written by Tai Tai