Continued coverage on Warner Bros. Discovery's potential sale continues from all avenues and mediums and as such, a new report has surfaced from the political blog, Semafor.
It seems that Larry Ellison, one of Trump's top political donors and the founder and owner of Oracle, is receiving "creative input" from Trump, who previously had his own, successful reality TV show.
Through the newly-created Paramount Skydance, of which Larry's son, David, has a controlling interest, Trump is advocating for the return of "raucous comedies and action movies from the '80s and '90s.'
Specifically, Trump is said to be an incredibly big fan of Jean Claude Van Damme's Bloodsport and has actively pushed for Ellison to expedite another Rush Hour film, starring Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker.
The backdrop to all of this is reporting that the current President appears to favor the Ellison family’s Paramount–Skydance bid over other interested buyers like Universal, Netflix, and Amazon.
Still, questions remain about whether a merger of that size could survive antitrust scrutiny.
According to these reports, Trump has signaled he’d be open to helping the Ellisons push a deal through Congress and the courts, so long as certain films and genres receive priority in the studio’s slate. Chief among them, more Rush Hour films and more movies similar to Bloodsport.
On the former, the last update on the next Rush Hour film came while Chan was promoting Karate Kid: Legends in the U.S. The action icon stated, "I don’t know. Ask the director, ask the studio, ask the writer. Hurry up! Otherwise, Chris Tucker and me [will be] 100 years old. We’ll be old men doing Rush Hour."
WB distributed the original Bloodsport film, although recent reports state that A24 is currently in talks to acquire the rights. The Rush Hour franchise belongs to New Line Cinema, a division of Warner Bros. Entertainment.
In addition to this report, it seems Trump also backs Ellison's bid for Warner Bros. as he wants to see certain CNN (which is owned by WBD) political correspondents axed.
These current talks between Paramount Skydance and the White House also include planning the upcoming UFC fight, currently slated to take place on the White House front lawn. It's believed that this spectacle will be streamed on Paramount+.