{"id":8078,"date":"2025-12-06T17:19:40","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T17:19:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2025\/12\/06\/hollywood-heres-your-chance-to-save-america-give-trump-an-overall-deal-the-hollywood-reporter\/"},"modified":"2025-12-06T17:19:40","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T17:19:40","slug":"hollywood-heres-your-chance-to-save-america-give-trump-an-overall-deal-the-hollywood-reporter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2025\/12\/06\/hollywood-heres-your-chance-to-save-america-give-trump-an-overall-deal-the-hollywood-reporter\/","title":{"rendered":"Hollywood, Here\u2019s Your Chance to Save America: Give Trump an Overall Deal – The Hollywood Reporter"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\tThe news that President Donald Trump<\/a> effectively greenlit<\/a> Rush Hour 4<\/em> at Paramount has had liberal Hollywood cycling through predictable stages of disbelief: awe, disgust, shame, rage and senselessness. All of which is understandable.<\/p>\n

\tAfter all, the deal \u2014 for a long-forsaken project, an action-comedy franchise starring two aging stars \u2014\u00a0underscores the servile fealty of new Paramount owners Larry and David Ellison amid their recent maneuvering to take control of TikTok and Warner Bros. Discovery (the latter seemingly futile<\/a>). It also showcases Trump\u2019s fondness for rehabilitating the careers of alleged sexual predators, in this case Rush Hour<\/em> series director Brett Ratner, who\u2019s recently been at work on his comeback project: an upcoming First Lady doc, Melania<\/em>, which Trump antagonist-turned-ally Jeff Bezos bought for $40 million for Amazon Prime shortly after the president was reelected last year. \t<\/p>\n

\tStill, maybe Hollywood should embrace acceptance. Or, better yet, pivot all the way to gushingly ushering Trump in.<\/p>\n

\tThat\u2019s right. Hollywood should openly encourage the moguls accommodating him \u2014 from Tim Cook at Apple to the Murdochs, who even after the Fox sale still retain their Century City lot as well as streamer Tubi \u2014 to give the man a first look, even commend those loyalists for bestowing an overall deal. Better yet, tell them to throw in a bungalow office.<\/p>\n

\tDo it for the business. Do it for the country.<\/p>\n

\tSure, it\u2019s wrong for Hollywood to be doing deals with a sitting president, particularly this one. But it\u2019s far less consequentially corrupt than what Trump\u2019s reportedly already up to in the crypto realm and Middle East development. If audiences don\u2019t like the output, they just won\u2019t watch. For regime-aligned magnates, even flops can be worthwhile devotional exercises. \t<\/p>\n

\tTrump, who considered attending USC\u2019s film school and nearly became<\/a> a studio owner in Florida in the early 2010s, has long been open about his love affair with the entertainment business. \u201cI was attracted to the glamour of the movies, and I admired guys like Sam Goldwyn, Darryl Zanuck and most of all Louis B. Mayer,\u201d he shared<\/a> in The Art of the Deal<\/em>. A few years later, he continued to extol<\/a> the moguls in a Playboy<\/em> interview, adding, \u201cthe ultimate job for me would have been running MGM in the \u201830s and \u201840s \u2014 pre-television.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tHis approach to the presidency is producorial. A key hiring criterion for high-level, public-facing roles is whether someone looks the part<\/a>. Or, in his words, is out of \u201ccentral casting.\u201d Then there\u2019s his variety of the spectacle: the gilded Oval Office reno, the executive order signings as scripted tableaux, the big military parade timed to his birthday, the proposal for a so-called \u201cArc de Trump\u201d neoclassical monument near Arlington National Cemetery.<\/p>\n

\tSo, let this industry be America\u2019s pain sponge. Distract Trump in development hell on a Rambo <\/em>reboot with his designated Hollywood \u201cambassador\u201d Sylvester Stallone. As a bonus, he\u2019ll likely get religion on domestic production repatriation incentives reform. He famously loves<\/a> Bloodsport<\/em>? How about pursuing a remake in lieu of pursuing actual blood sport in Venezuela?<\/p>\n

\tThe president already has an eponymous production LLC, which was a vehicle for his work on reality projects before his political ascent. He can reactivate it. It\u2019s easy to think of a cross-genre development slate \u2014 bolstered by his own lexicological IP. Imagine a MAGA-filtered version of the viral video format Ridiculousness<\/em>, called Covfefe<\/em>; a right-wing revisionist history anthology, Witch Hunt<\/em>; a reactionary answer to The Daily Show<\/em>, working title Fake News<\/em>; or a hardboiled police procedural with a Blue Lives Matter framing under the banner of American Carnage<\/em>. \t<\/p>\n

\tWhat would seem to keep Trump most busy would be dreaming up a high-gloss, long-form retelling of his own life story and sprawling multi-generational family saga. It likely won\u2019t end up in the league of Visconti\u2019s The Leopard<\/em>, or even Netflix\u2019s The Leopard<\/em>. But who cares? The baseline third of the electorate which buys into any tale he tells will no doubt turn on, tune in and agitprop-out to this one, too.<\/p>\n

\tFrom Home Alone 2<\/em> to The Apprentice<\/em>, Hollywood fueled the larger-than-life mythos and mystique that made America fall in love with Trump. It\u2019s since spent the past decade attempting to atone by collectively distancing itself from him. That\u2019s done no good. Perhaps it\u2019s time to bear hug him.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The news that President Donald Trump effectively greenlit Rush Hour 4 at Paramount has had liberal Hollywood cycling through predictable stages of disbelief: awe, disgust, shame, rage and senselessness. All of which is understandable. After all, the deal \u2014 for a long-forsaken project, an action-comedy franchise starring two aging stars \u2014\u00a0underscores the servile fealty of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8079,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}