The president is scrutinising studio deals, and was rewarded with the promise of a Rush Hour reboot. With Supergirl, Hoppers and a live-action Moana on the way, can Hollywood stand up to Trump?

It’s fair to say that Hollywood is in crisis, or at least in transition. Studios getting taken over, culture wars all over the place, and gen AI rearing its head. The last thing they need is an interventionist president determined to wage war on the entertainment industry, as well as no doubt extracting what value he can. Donald Trump, as we know, is very interested in the movie business: in his pre-politics days, he made dozens of appearances in films, as well as on TV. It seems very likely that he’s eyeing a place at Hollywood’s top table after he leaves office (presuming he does).

Perhaps that’s what is behind his most spectacular recent intervention: demanding, and getting, a fourth Rush Hour movie from the new owners of Paramount Pictures, the studio that was recently taken over by David Ellison, son of Larry, one of Trump’s key allies. Coincidentally, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is one of the funders of Paramount’s subsequent bid to derail Netflix’s takeover of Warner Bros, with Trump himself suggesting he might influence US corporate regulators to prevent the Netflix deal from going ahead. And of course, in the background, is Trump’s threat of non-specific “tariffs” on the film industry, ostensibly aimed at keeping movie production inside the US. But, arguably, this could also be a way of keeping Hollywood’s top executives nervous and pliable.

For those not going out to celebrate, you can still party with Harry and Sally, play cards with Jack Lemmon and make merry hell at the Overlook Hotel

At the end of any especially troublesome year it’s always good to revisit The Apartment, Billy Wilder’s brilliantly bleak comedy of office politics and festive bad cheer. It memorably ends on the stroke of midnight as heartsick Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) abandons a drunken new year’s party to be with hapless, jobless CC Baxter (Jack Lemmon) instead. Is The Apartment suggesting that Kubelik and Baxter then live happily ever after? Probably not, because I’ve never been convinced that these two lovers are going to stay the course. They’re too mismatched and desperate; their wounds are still too fresh. What the ending gives us is the next best thing: a sudden sense of hope and freedom, with everything packed in boxes except for a bottle, two glasses and a deck of cards. Nothing to lose and nowhere to go. “Shut up and deal.” A clean break, a fresh start. Xan Brooks