I don’t know that I’d call $15 million against 15% of the total gross a bad decision. More like pragmatic. “You want me to be in another one of these? Fine, then. It’ll cost ya.”

It’s no big secret that there were hefty up front paychecks for Tucker, Ratner, and screenwriter Nathanson, as well. In fact, it was reported at AICN by way of Variety over two years ago.

And apart from this movie, it appears Chan isn’t really even trying to please American audiences. He’s had three movies produced overseas, that I’m aware of, that have yet to receive theatrical distribution stateside.

As for the Cruise thang, the media may have been a little harder on him. Then again, he’s one of the executive producers on the MI films. It’s pretty much his franchise.

And what can happen when a star/producer takes a strong position against something in a public forum, or in this case rails against the use of anti-depressants on national television?

Well, if a high enough percentage of your core audience takes, or knows someone who takes, antidepressants, and they don’t much care for your opinion, or feel offended by what you’ve said, they very likely won’t go to your movie.

Maybe the media was a bit biased in how they interpreted the weekend grosses. Seems to me like Cruise painted a big target on his chest all by himself. There’s certainly enough evidence to support one perspective here as another.

And what do I know, after all? I’m just spit-balling all this…

random side note…there’s no need for a war of comments…just because someone has a differing opinion is no reason to try and beat them into submission with counterpoint after counterpoint…

Furthermore, Peter is a Noob is obviously just trying to get a rise with his useless dreck of a comment. It’s so full of F bombs and piece of sh*t this and piece of sh*t that. NOBODY should take anything he has to say seriously if he can’t find a way to express himself sans vulgarity. Again, not saying he doesn’t have a RIGHT to express himself, I just think he could do it better. So nobody feed me any 1st ammendment crap, please.

AND I would like to apologize for bringing up religion in the first place. I just thought I was making a valid point. And in some sense, I guess I was because my comment didn’t have to be moderated. So hah.

Dbunker, do you know what campy means? Obviously not or else you wouldn’t refer to Chan’s entire body of work as such. Granted the Rush Hour and Shanghai series fall under that category, but if you look at what he did before ever coming to America, you’d see that that is a whole other story. Heck, even Rumble in the Bronx and Who Am I weren’t that bad either. It’s just something about his want to please American audiences that has made Chan make some pretty bad decisions as of late. ie. Rush Hour 3

“RUSH HOUR 3 is fucking retarded.

The majority of the jokes are so old and worn that you almost can’t believe they’re doing it. Did they really just do another version of Who’s On First? Did they really just do a fried chicken joke? Did Jackie Chan speak ebonics again? Hey look, that Frenchman hates America!”

That sums it up, I couldn’t stand watching 5-10 mins of the first Rush Hour movie on Cable.

I can’t believe a hack movie like this makes $50m yet something decent like Grindhouse bombs out.

And please guys, let’s keep the conversation off religion. I had to moderate a few comments out.

It seems to me that it’s all about what the media believes people want to hear. Tom Cruise gets all of the infamy in the world for almost six straight months, so of course the media will exaggerate the successes or failures of his film, even to the point of fabricating said failure. But, there’s no bad blood towards media darling Ratner, and Tucker and Chan have no bad publicity working against them, so outlets blow the success of that movie out of proportion.

Apparently, you can’t even trust the information the media throws at you that’s about something as unimportant as a movie. It’s sad.

Uh Dur, I think you’re way off when you say that Mission Impossible 3 failed because Tom Cruise is not a Christian. 95% of Hollywood is not Christian, and most of them don’t “fail” at the box office because of this. I think Cruise did get some backlash because of a combination of things, including his in your face scientology. He also was going on talk shows and saying some pretty off-the-wall stuff, plus the whole Tom-Kat thing.

If it makes your feel any better, box office mojo’s headline was “Rush Hour 3 packs less punch” and they quickly pointed out it made less than 2.

”Rush Hour 3” sluggish, but still No. 1 | Rush Hour 3 | Box Office