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Well, Donald is at it again! On top of using his influence to get Jimmy Kimmel canned (for a time), it seems he got Paramount to greenlight a movie on behalf of an alleged greasy director friend of his. How many red hats do you think’ll be in it? And more importantly, how crazy would it be to have the power to set a multi-million dollar wheel in motion because of a phone call?!
This is the multi-million dollar question that got our wheels turning this morning. We wondered which other movies and TV shows were made because of some strange meddling, and set out to find them. Ugh! Looks like that one call to Paramount put us to work too! When will this bigwig butterfly effect ever end?!
15 ‘Rush Hour 4’ allegedly was greenlit by Paramount after push from Donald TrumpNew Line Cinema
Reports from November 2025 confirm that Paramount has allegedly greenlit Rush Hour 4 after Donald Trump reportedly lobbied Paramount's owner on behalf of the film's director, Brett Ratner. The film is in pre-production, with Ratner slated to direct and will potentially star Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker.
14 Being assigned to work on ‘Shrek’ was a punishmentDreamWorks
At DreamWorks, working on Shrek was initially a form of punishment for animators who underperformed on other movies like The Prince of Egypt. Animators called it being "Shreked" or being sent to "the Gulag". Ironically, the film became a massive success, winning an Oscar for Best Animated Feature, and spawning a now multi-billion dollar franchise.
13 ‘The Emoji Movie’ was made for that sweet, sweet intellectual propertySony Pictures
Emojis are actually owned by a German-based company simply called “emoji.” In July 2015, Sony won a three-studio bidding war against Warner Bros. and Paramount for the film pitch without even having a script. The aggressive pursuit was driven by the success of The Lego Movie, and The Emoji Movie got fast-tracked.
12 ‘Howard the Duck’ was basically one big commercial to help sell techUniversal Pictures
George Lucas funded Howard the Duck to use it as a showcase for his computerized editing system called EditDroid, and other new technologies at Lucasfilm's Sprocket Systems. The movie flopped and lost Lucas so much money that he had to sell his computer animation division to Steve Jobs, who turned it into Pixar.
11 Universal made ‘Cats’ to compete with ‘The Rise of Skywalker’Universal Pictures
In 2019, Universal wanted a big holiday musical to steer young female moviegoers away from the latest Star Wars movie. This meant fast-tracking Cats before fully fleshing out the CGI fur. Rushing to release it on December 20th meant even less post production for the CGI, and it looked comically bad.
10 McDonald’s and Coke basically made ‘Mac and Me’IMDb
The 1988 E.T rip-off got made because of a sponsorship agreement with McDonald's and Coke. The film's producer, R.J. Louis, was an ad executive who worked on McDonald's campaigns, and included a full song and a dance sequence inside an actual McDonald's. In one memorable scene, the alien is revived by drinking a can of Coke.
9 Steven Spielberg had a vision of John Goodman as Fred FlintstoneSpielberg had the rights to The Flintstones since the mid-late ‘80s, but the film was in "development hell." At a table read with John Goodman for the 1989 movie Always, he had an epiphany and announced, “Ladies and Gentlemen, I'd like to say something before we start: I've found my Fred Flintstone." This one line got the ball rolling and The Flintstones was released in 1994.
8 ABC didn’t understand ‘Twin Peaks’ but wanted a “prestige” oddball showExecutives at ABC admittedly didn’t understand David Lynch's pitch for Twin Peaks, but greenlit it to hopefully generate critical attention and prestige. A show from a respected oddball film director like Lynch fit the bill.
7 The O.J Trial and a sex tape spawned ‘The Kardashians’Shutterstock
Without the landmark OJ case that patriarch Robert Kardashian took on, people may have never known the Kardashian name. Then in 2007, a video of Kim Kardashian and Ray J was just the thing to create buzz for the reality show Keeping Up with the Kardashians, which premiered later that same year.
6 The idea of the theme song got ‘Gilligans Island’ madeWikimedia Commons
CBS president James T. Aubrey initially hated the show's premise and thought no one would get it, but show creator Sherwood Schwartz convinced him that the theme song would help the audience understand the premise. Aubrey agreed to hear it and Schwartz had to write the famous "Ballad of Gilligan's Isle" overnight.
5 ‘Cop Rock’ was made to scratch a musical itchIMDb
ABC loved Steven Bochco for his success with hits like Hill Street Blues and L.A. Law. He pitched a police procedural musical to satisfy a musical itch he had, and he was given the creative freedom to create this unusual musical police procedural. It came out in 1990 and was canceled after 11 episodes due to poor ratings and a lack of audience acceptance for its unusual format.
4 ‘The Cleveland Show’ was greenlit to keep Seth MacFarlane at FoxThe development of The Cleveland Show was part of a deal to keep Seth MacFarlane at Fox by securing his services for several more years as an executive producer on Family Guy, American Dad, and this new show. That 2008 deal extended his relationship with the network through 2012.
3 ‘Sharknado’ was made because of the titleSyFy Films
The general concept was pitched as a concept called ‘Shark Storm,’ and Syfy offered to make the film if they used the title the network had been sitting on: Sharknado. Writers got to work on the script.
2 ‘Troll 2’ was made because the writer hated that her friends were going vegetarianEpic Productions
Screenwriter Rossella Drudi, who co-wrote the script with her husband and director Claudio Fragasso said, “I came up with a story about who were vegetarians because at that point in my life, I had many friends who'd become vegetarians and it pissed me off. So I had the idea of replacing the vampires in the vampire story with vegetarians."
1 ‘Cavemen’ was greenlit based on their successful GEICO commercialsABC Studios
The 2007 series was made because ABC believed the cavemen characters had enough built-in recognition to anchor a quirky sitcom. Turning a 30-second joke into a full narrative series was a massive failure and it was cancelled in less than 2 months.
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