By The three Rush Hour films starring Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker earned more than $849 million worldwide. The trilogy combined some pretty solid action and the odd couple/buddy cop formula. So why not try to turn that into TV gold?
That’s what CBS is thinking with the Rush Hour TV show. Starring Jon Foo as Jackie Chan and Justin Hires as Chris Tucker, the series has Bill Lawrence (Scrubs creator) serving as show runner.
And hey, here’s the trailer.
Ouch.
Don’t want to judge without seeing the pilot, but this looks like a dud. We can all judge for ourselves when the show premieres on CBS on Thursday, March 31st.
Thing is, CBS had another Rush Hour-like show back in the late 90s. It was called Martial Law, and it was pretty great.
[via Screen Rant]
Capitalizing on the success of Rush Hour, Martial Law ran for two season on CBS from 1998 to 2000. The show starred Sammo Hung, one of Jackie Chan’s good friends for decades and a legendary actor, action director, and Hong Kong filmmaker in his own right. (Cliffs Notes: Sammo Hung trained in the same Peking Opera School as Jackie Chan, fought Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon, dueled Donnie Yen in SPL and Ip Man 2, and has starred in countless Hong Kong classics such as Magnificent Butcher, Encounters of the Spooky Kind, Eastern Condors, Pedicab Driver, and the drama Painted Faces.)
Martial Law was kind of like Rush Hour: The Show with Sammo Hung as Jackie Chan and, eventually, Arsenio Hall as Chris Tucker. Martial Law also featured Kelly Hu as a supporting player in the LAPD.
But Martial Law was better than just Rush Hour Lite.
Fun, sort of zany, occasionally heartfelt, and strangely watchable, I remember tuning in to Martial Law pretty regularly when it first aired. Martial Law even crossed over with Chuck Norris’ Walker, Texas Ranger and pit Sammo Hung against Billy Blanks (Mr. Tae Bo himself) and Mark Dacascos.
You can see some of the fights from the show in the video above as well as the Sammo Hung vs. Donnie Yen fight in Ip Man 2, which shows how well Sammo can move despite his size.
After years in limbo, Martial Law will finally be released on DVD in the US this spring from Visual Entertainment.
