When Donald Trump was elected to the presidency in 2024 after being found liable for sexual abuse, his political victory set in motion another comeback — for director and producer Brett Ratner. 

Ratner, who has directed films including the “Rush Hour” movies, “X-Men: The Last Stand” and “Tower Heist,” was all but cast out of Hollywood after being accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women, whose allegations he denied, in 2017 at the height of the #MeToo movement. 

Now, Ratner is back directing and producing with “Melania: 20 Days to History,” a documentary, premiering Thursday and in theaters Friday. Amazon MGM Studios paid an eye-popping $40 million for the rights to the film, which follows Melania Trump in the days and weeks leading up to the 2025 inauguration. 

Ahead of its official premiere, Ratner and Melania Trump, an executive producer of the documentary, hosted a private screening for VIP guests at the White House on Saturday, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Queen Rania of Jordan; prominent business and tech leaders, including Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and Apple CEO Tim Cook; and ex-boxer Mike Tyson, who served time in prison after being convicted of rape in 1992, were among those in attendance for the event, where guests got “glossy, commemorative black and white popcorn boxes for guests, served by gloved waiters so they won’t get fingerprints on them.”

Directing a documentary on an American first lady and screening it at a star-studded White House event represents a remarkable turn for Ratner, coming over eight years after six women, including actors Olivia Munn and Natasha Henstridge, accused him of sexual misconduct in a bombshell Los Angeles Times report published in November 2017. Ratner and his attorney denied all the allegations of sexual misconduct laid out in the article, and he was never charged with a crime.

Representatives for Ratner and Amazon did not respond to requests for comment. 

The Hollywood figures accused of sexual misconduct at the height of the #MeToo movement have seen mixed results at best in their efforts to revitalize their professional careers. As The Hollywood Reporter’s Gary Baum wrote in 2022: “One of #MeToo’s greatest victories, at the practical level, has been its unrelenting administration of professional punishment.”

For years, it seemed as if that would be the case for Ratner. Warner Bros. ended its first-look deal with Ratner amid the allegations against him. Projects he was attached to, including a fourth installment of the “Rush Hour” franchise starring Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker and planned biopics of Hugh Hefner and Milli Vanilli, were dropped or put on hold. In 2023, Ratner immigrated to Israel. 

But when Trump won the 2024 presidential election amid a backlash to the #MeToo movement, it didn’t take long for Ratner’s fortunes to turn. Variety first reported in January 2025 that he was set to direct the Melania Trump documentary, backed by Amazon. Paramount is set to distribute “Rush Hour 4” after Trump personally lobbied owner Larry Ellison to revive the franchise, Semafor reported in November. Ratner, who is friendly with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is also reportedly working on a documentary about the Abraham Accords, the Middle East peace deal negotiated in Trump’s first term.

Ratner’s comeback represents another sign of the #MeToo backlash, said Elisa Batista, campaign director at the gender justice organization UltraViolet, which advocates for survivors of sexual harassment and assault in industries including politics and media. 

“Sexual violence, rape culture is a big-time barrier, especially for women in these competitive industries,” she said. “We made some major inroads into the industry, and we’re facing a backlash moment where all of a sudden, perpetrators are starting to be seen as the victims and those whose own careers were derailed because of sexual harassment and sexual assault are seen as making this up.”

Days before the Los Angeles Times published its 2017 article, another woman had accused Ratner of raping her in a since-deleted Facebook post. Ratner denied her allegation and filed a defamation lawsuit against her in what was one of the first legal cases stemming from the #MeToo movement; he later dropped the lawsuit. 

More recently, Ratner’s name has come up in the Justice Department’s files on the late disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In an undated photo released last year, Ratner was pictured hugging a shirtless Jean-Luc Brunel, a modeling agent and close Epstein associate who died by suicide in a French prison in 2022 while awaiting trial on charges of rape and sex trafficking of minors. Brunel and his lawyers maintained his innocence. Names and photos of many prominent individuals have been included in the thousands of publicly released files from the Justice Department and Epstein’s estate; Ratner has not been accused of wrongdoing related to Epstein.   

Before the most serious allegations against him became public, Ratner cultivated an image as a playboy and courted controversy: He apologized and later stepped down as a producer of the 2012 Academy Awards ceremony after using a homophobic slur in a Q&A session for his film “Tower Heist.” After the Los Angeles Times published its Ratner exposé, the actor Elliot Page accused Ratner of outing him as gay with degrading comments on the set of “X-Men: The Last Stand” in 2005, when Page was 18. Page publicly came out as gay in 2014 and in 2020 came out as a transgender man. 

There has been relatively little public outcry or protest over “Melania,” which has so far seen tepid ticket sales and has been projected to bring in between $1 million and $5 million on its opening weekend in the United States. 

Some Democrats criticized the White House for hosting the screening for the documentary on the day that Border Patrol agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse who was assisting others at a protest in Minneapolis. 

“Today DHS assassinated a VA nurse in the street, [Attorney General Pam] Bondi is attempting to extort voter files, and half the country is bracing on the eve of a potentially crippling ice storm with FEMA gutted,” Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York wrote on X. “So what is the President up to? Having a movie night at the White House. He’s unfit.”

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) referred to Ratner as “a disgraced director” and “Epstein-associate” in a Monday news release slamming Trump for promoting the film “to his billionaire buddies and wealthy donors.” 

“Trump is more concerned about his personal wealth and his lavish lifestyle than the issues Americans care about most,” the DNC’s rapid response director, Kendall Witmer, said in a statement. “When will Trump put his ego aside to put everyday Americans first?” 

Batista and UltraViolet are focused on pushing for cultural change in industries like Hollywood and politics, where men in positions of power wield significant sway over young women’s careers with few formal guardrails or protections. In the years since the height of #MeToo, advocates have also lobbied for legislation to end practices and legal tools advocates say are used to silence survivors.

In 2022, Congress passed bipartisan legislation banning the use of forced arbitration clauses and nondisclosure agreements in cases of workplace sexual harassment and assault. 

California also passed the Speak Your Truth, which aims to protect survivors from defamation lawsuits intended to keep them from speaking out. Law professor Victoria Burke, driven by her own personal experience, has championed the passage of versions of the law in states around the country. 

Efforts to pass the Speak Your Truth Act in New York, another entertainment industry hub, died in 2025, but Batista said she and other advocates hope lawmakers pass it this year.

“We’re working on it again this year, but we need to get back to basics,” Batista said. “We believe survivors, survivors are powerful, and we have all the tools we need to make the necessary cultural and political changes here.”