Jackie Chan Once Thought The First ‘Rush Hour’ Was Terrible

“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’ [I said].”

His manager begged him to try one more movie, handing him the script for “Rush Hour”. “I said ‘no, I don’t like it,'” he recalled, worried about his English proficiency.

“This time, [your character] is from Hong Kong, so you can speak terrible English,” his manager pleaded, pushing Chan to accept the role. “Terrible English is okay,” Chan said, agreeing to the movie on that condition.

After he finished filming “Rush Hour”, Chan said he told his manager that he was officially done with American movies. “This is it,” he remembers saying. “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!”

After going back to Asia, Chan said he was surprised to receive a phone call from his American manager. “Big hit!” his manager had told him. Even more surprising was the fact that the audience roared with laughter at the premiere. “Why are they laughing?” he had thought to himself. “I just don’t understand!”

Chan says that after the success of the “Rush Hour” trilogy, Hollywood finally took him seriously.

Chan, who has been doing numerous interviews as part of a media tour for his recent movies, “The Lego Ninjago Movie” and “The Foreigner”, has spoken at length about his plans to make “Rush Hour 4”. On October 5, he appeared on The Power 106’s “The Cruz Show” and said he had agreed to a script after turning down others for years. Afterwards, he joked that he was so dedicated to making “Rush Hour 4” that he’d even kill off Chris Tucker’s character if he didn’t agree to the script.

“Rush Hour 4” is scheduled to begin filming in 2018.