Rush Hour 4 Gets a Big Update From Jackie Chan (Could It Still Happen?)

Jackie Chan is in a rush to reunite with Chris Tucker on Rush Hour 4. It’s going on three decades since fast-handed Hong Kong Chief Inspector Lee (Chan) originally joined forces with fast-talking L.A.P.D. Detective Carter (Tucker) in the Brett Ratner-directed buddy cop comedy Rush Hour, which spawned two sequels: 2001’s Rush Hour 2 and 2007’s Rush Hour 3.

Chan, 71, has been attached to a long-awaited fourth installment since 2007, when New Line Cinema started fast-tracking Rush Hour 4 before the agile martial arts legend — then 53 — aged out of performing his own stunts.

“I don’t know. Ask the director, ask the studio, ask the writer. Hurry up,” the Karate Kid: Legends star told ScreenRant when asked about a new Rush Hour movie. “Otherwise, Chris Tucker and me [will be] 100 years old. We’ll be old men doing Rush Hour.”

RELATED: Karate Kid: Legends Kicks Off With Franchise’s Lowest Rotten Tomatoes Score in Decades

Chan also confirmed he still hopes to do a third Shanghai movie with Owen Wilson. “I want to do [another] Shanghai Knights, Shanghai Dawn,” Chan added of the long-in-the-works threequel. “Shangai Noon, Shanghai Knights, and Shanghai Dawn. The script is still going on. I want to do a Rush Hour 4.”

Franchise producer Arthur M. Sarkissian, who also executive produced the Rush Hour reboot TV series that aired 13 episodes on CBS before being cancelled in 2016, said in 2007 that a fourth movie would have a shorter wait between installments.

“I’ve spoken to Chris Tucker,” Sarkissian told Worst Previews at the time. “I said, ‘We’ve waited six years to do Rush Hour 3 and if we wait another six years, Jackie is going to be way too tired to do this stuff.’ So Chris is on board — he said he would love to do it. But we have to make sure it stands on its own. And it hinges on how successful Rush Hour 3 is for the studio to say we want to make another one.”

The Paris-set third movie took in $258 million at the global box office, below the $347.3 million of Rush Hour 2, which saw an increase over the 1998 original’s $244 million.

When Rush Hour 4 never materialized, Ratner suggested in a 2011 interview that reuniting the two stars and the director would be “too expensive.” Ratner, who helmed such films as the Silence of the Lambs prequel Red Dragon and X-Men sequel The Last Stand, hasn’t directed a film since the Dwayne Johnson-starring Hercules in 2014. Warner Bros., which released all three Rush Hour movies through New Line Cinema, cut ties with Ratner when multiple women, including actress Olivia Munn, came forward with allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct against the filmmaker.

By 2012, Sarkissian revealed he was working on Rush Hour 4 with Chan and Tucker. “I’m trying to do it closer to how I did Rush Hour 1, more down to earth, more gritty, introduce two new characters and make it real the way the first one was,” he told Crave Online at the time. “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,” the producer added. “I want something new.”

Chan and Tucker confirmed the fourth movie was in development in 2016, and that the actors turned down multiple scripts over “the last seven years.”

“Next year, probably [we will] start. I hope — if Chris Tucker agrees,” Chan said in 2017, adding, “It’s not about money. It’s about time to make [it]. We’re all, like, old men. I told Chris Tucker, ‘Before we get old, please, let’s do Rush Hour 4.’”

Chan can next be seen opposite Ralph Macchio in Karate Kid: Legends, in theaters May 30.