As early as 1999, Jackie Chan was planning to star in an action-comedy film called Nosebleed. Hot on the heels of Rush Hour, the film was expected to be the first in another franchise for Chan, and was slated to be released in 2002. Wondering why you’ve never seen it? Get a load of this description of the story: Chan was going to play a window washer at the World Trade Center, who becomes interested in a waitress working at the Windows on the World restaurant that once sat on the top floor of the North Tower.
Oh yeah, and the pair was also supposed to get mixed up in a terrorist plot to bomb either the Twin Towers or the Statue of Liberty (sources differ on the exact target). Though Chan had done a fair amount of groundwork in preparation for the film—like figuring out which sides of each building were best to work on in order to avoid wind—the events of September 11th ultimately altered the course of the production. In fact, according to Chan, shooting was set to begin the morning of the attacks. As fate would have it, the script wasn’t completed in time.
Jackie Chan Was Supposed to Film a World Trade Center Movie the Morning of 9/11
“Filming was scheduled to have taken place at 7:00 a.m. last Tuesday morning,” Chan told Oriental Daily News the week after 9/11. “I had to be at the top of one of the towers for one of the scenes.” The first plane crashed into the North Tower at 8:46 a.m. that day. It’s highly unlikely Chan would’ve survived if he’d been there at the time, as none of the 79 staff members on duty at Windows on the World are believed to have made it out alive.
Following the attacks, it was reported that Nosebleed was going to be reworked to avoid having any connection to the tragedy. This apparently would’ve involved removing the terrorist aspect of the script entirely. On September 19, an MGM spokesperson was quoted as telling Empire Online, “It might have been written that way, but that’s not the way we’re going to do it.” Chan was confident that he’d still make the movie using a different building, but in the end, the story was completely abandoned.
The post 25 Years Ago, Jackie Chan Was Supposed to Be Filming on Top of the World Trade Center on the Morning of 9/11 appeared first on VICE.
