Background and career
Brett Ratner (born March 28, 1969) is an American film director and producer. He directed the Rush Hour film series, The Family Man, Red Dragon, X-Men: The Last Stand, Tower Heist, Hercules, and Melania. He is a producer or executive producer of several films, including the Horrible Bosses series, The Revenant, and War Dogs, and the television series Prison Break. Ratner directed his first feature film, Money Talks, in 1997. He is the co-founder of RatPac Entertainment, a film production company. In 2017, numerous women in Hollywood came forward with allegations of rape and sexual assault by Ratner. This resulted in his business deals and prospective film projects getting canceled or scrapped, with Warner Bros. Pictures and talent agencies distancing themselves from him, and with Ratner subsequently emigrating to Israel.
Brett Ratner was born in 1969 in Miami Beach, Florida, the son of Marsha Presman and Ronald Ratner. He grew up in a middle-class Jewish family. His grandfather was Lee Ratner, the d-CON mail order rat poison company founder and a real estate developer. His mother was born in Cuba and immigrated to the U.S. in the 1960s with her parents, Fanita and Mario Presman, whose families themselves originally moved to Cuba from Eastern Europe. Ratner's mother was sixteen when he was born. Ratner has said that he "really didn't know" his biological father, and that he considers Alvin Malnik, a lawyer and businessman with alleged organized crime ties who opened the restaurant The Forge in Miami Beach, to be his father, "the one who raised" him. Malnik was a friend of Lee Ratner and not romantically involved with Marsha Presman. Ratner's biological father became homeless in Miami Beach, a situation which inspired Brett Ratner to become a board member of the nationwide nonprofit organization Chrysalis, which helps the homeless find work. Ratner attended Rabbi Alexander S. Gross Hebrew Academy elementary school and attended Alexander Muss High School in Israel and graduated in 1986 from Miami Beach Senior High School. While growing up in Miami Beach, Ratner was an extra on the set of Scarface and was able to watch Miami Vice film around town. Shortly before his high school graduation, his mother and biological father married, with the intention of legitimizing his status. Ratner attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, graduating in 1990. He later cited Martin Scorsese's 1980 film Raging Bull as his inspiration to enter the world of film.
Ratner began directing music videos in the 1990s. When he was a sophomore at New York University Tisch Schools of the Arts, he was manager and executive producer for B.M.O.C. (Big Man On Campus), one of the first white rap groups. While a student at NYU, he released his first short film Whatever Happened to Mason Reese?. The rap group Public Enemy attended the film's premiere and asked Ratner to make the group's music videos. Ratner did the debut videos for Prime Minister Pete Nice before working with Redman, LL Cool J, Heavy D and Wu-Tang Clan. He has directed music videos for artists such as Mariah Carey Madonna, Miley Cyrus, Jay-Z and was scheduled to direct a video for Michael Jackson before its production was cancelled. He directed Carey's "We Belong Together", "I Still Believe", "Obsessed" and "Heartbreaker" and others. Ratner made his motion picture debut when he directed Money Talks in 1997. The film, an action-comedy about a con-man accused of organizing a prison break, was Ratner's first collaboration with comedian Chris Tucker. Receiving mostly negative reviews, the film's budget was $25 million. In 1998, he directed Rush Hour, an action-comedy starring Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker, which was released in September 1998 and went on to become the studio's highest-grossing film and the highest grossing comedy at the time. Ratner uses music on the set to inspire the production, and when filming Rush Hour, a Michael Jackson song he played for inspiration ended up in the film after Chris Tucker began dancing in the middle of a scene. Ratner directed The Family Man, a drama starring Nicolas Cage, in 2000. In 2001, Ratner directed Rush Hour 2. In 2002, he directed Red Dragon, the prequel to The Silence of the Lambs, about Hannibal Lecter. In 2004, Ratner directed After the Sunset, starring Pierce Brosnan and Salma Hayek. The action comedy film revolves around a master thief pulling off one last big score, with an FBI agent in hot pursuit. In 2006, Ratner directed X-Men: The Last Stand, then directed Rush Hour 3, which was released in 2007. Ratner directed a television commercial for Wynn Las Vegas featuring Steve Wynn on top of Encore Las Vegas in 2008. In 2010, Ratner directed the ensemble comedy caper Tower Heist, starring Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy. The film was originally based on an idea from Murphy titled 'Trump Heist' and was about disgruntled employees of Donald Trump planning to rob Trump Tower, though references to Trump were removed from the film. In early 2021, Ratner announced that he would direct a long-gestated Milli Vanilli biopic, which would have been his first project since Paramount's 2014 film Hercules for Millennium Media. In February 2021, Millennium Media stated it would not be moving forward with Ratner's project. As of November 2025, Ratner has been developing a fourth Rush Hour film. President Trump reportedly played a role in reviving the project. In October 2017, during the MeToo movement, a former talent agency employee accused Ratner of rape. On November 1, 2017, six women, including Olivia Munn and Natasha Henstridge, accused Ratner of sexual assault and harassment, as well as following an actress into a bathroom without invitation and masturbating as another entered his trailer to deliver food. The same month, Elliot Page accused Ratner of sexual harassment and outing the then-18-year-old Page as lesbian (before Page came out as a trans man) in front of many onlookers including Anna Paquin, who later confirmed the story. A former fashion model came forward regarding an incident involving Russell Simmons and Ratner back in 1991, when Simmons coerced her to perform oral sex while Ratner was present. On November 1, 2017, the same day as the allegations of six women, Warner Bros. announced it had severed ties with Ratner. Afterwards, Ratner announced that he was "[stepping] away from all Warner Bros.–related activities" and Warner Bros. was reviewing the issue. In April 2018, Warner Bros. announced that they would not renew their $450-million co-producing deal with RatPac. Ratner has denied the 2017 allegations of sexual harassment and assault against him. In January 2026, Ratner made his return to directing with Melania, about incumbent First Lady Melania Trump in the twenty days leading up to the second inauguration of her husband, Donald Trump, as the 47th President of the United States. Melania served as a producer, and filming began in December 2024, one month after Donald Trump won the presidential election. Amazon MGM Studios acquired the rights to the film, and released it in theaters on January 30, 2026. The film received overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics, who criticized its self-promotional or propagandistic nature, and was a box-office bomb, grossing $16.7 million on a $40 million production budget. It began streaming on Amazon Prime Video on March 9, 2026.
Ratner was executive producer of the television series Prison Break, which aired from 2005 to 2009, and directed its pilot episode. In 2011, Ratner produced the TV documentary, American Masters: Woody Allen – A Documentary. That same year, he produced Horrible Bosses, a comedy about employees plotting to kill their bosses. Horrible Bosses opened at the domestic box office with $28.1 million in its first weekend. Ratner produced a remake of Snow White, Mirror Mirror (2012), based on the screenplay The Brothers Grimm: Snow White by Melisa Wallack. In 2014, he produced Horrible Bosses 2, the sequel to his 2011 film. Ratner executive-produced the Rush Hour TV series based on the Rush Hour film series. In 2015, Ratner produced Black Mass, a biopic about gangster James "Whitey" Bulger, played by Johnny Depp. The same year, Ratner was executive producer of The Revenant, starring Leonardo DiCaprio. He was an executive producer on the 2016 film War Dogs, directed by Todd Phillips and starring Jonah Hill and Miles Teller.
In December 2012, Ratner and Australian media mogul James Packer formed a joint venture, RatPac Entertainment. The firm will produce independent films and co-produce big-budget films with a major studio. Packer's stake in the company was later bought out by Len Blavatnik's First Access Entertainment. The company makes 25 films annually. By 2017, the company co-financed over 50 films which had 51 Oscar nominations and earned a total of over $10 billion in box office. RatPac and Dune Entertainment formed a film investment vehicle, which in September 2013, entered a multi-year, 75-film co-producing partnership with Warner Bros. The company has partnered with New Regency, advertising firm WPP, CMC Capital Partners, and Shanghai Media Group. Ratner worked with CMC to form a fund aimed at investments in Chinese media companies. Ratner made $40 million after the release of Gravity, which was RatPac's first investment. In June 2014, Ratner's RatPac Entertainment and Class 5 Films acquired the film rights to the non-fiction article "American Hippopotamus", by Jon Mooallem, about the meat shortage in the U.S. in 1910 to import hippopotamuses. The film was produced by Ratner in collaboration with Edward Norton and William Migliore. On April 18, 2017, Access Entertainment, a subsidiary of Access Industries, acquired James Packer's ownership stake in RatPac. The next year, Warner Bros. announced that they were cutting ties with the company after Brett Ratner's sexual harassment allegations with Rampage as the final film to be co-financed by the company with Warner Bros., and the final film produced by RatPac overall. In November 2018, RatPac-Dune's minority ownership stake in a library of 76 Warner Bros. films was put up for sale, with investors in the fund backing the library to cash out. Vine Alternative Investments made a high bid for the library, but in January 2019, Warner Bros. exercised their rights to match the bid for the library and essentially acquired RatPac-Dune's stakes. The cost was estimated at nearly $300 million.
Ratner appeared on the MTV series Punk'd when Hugh Jackman, who portrays Wolverine in the X-Men films, was the subject of a practical joke that made it appear Ratner's $3.6 million home in Beverly Hills was destroyed by a BBQ grill explosion. Ashton Kutcher later arrived at his home and hugged him. In April 2007, Fox announced that he, Carrie Fisher, Garry Marshall and Jon Avnet would be the judges for the network's filmmaking-competition/reality TV series, On the Lot. He appeared as himself in an episode of the television series Entourage, which was shot at his Beverly Hills home. In 2009, Ratner created The Shooter Series which compiled his work, including interviews with Ratner, and a short film about Mickey Rourke's transition into boxing.
