Apparently, it was going to be a bit like The Godfather Part II.
There has been talk of a sixth Die Hard movie for the guts of a decade, and while we’ve known about the tentatively titled Die Hard: Year One for some time, it is now officially dead in the water, apparently a victim of the Disney/Fox merger.
Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura told Polygon the following:
“Yeah, no, It’s not happening. But what was really interesting was we actually came up with an idea to do it. It was a project that wasn’t Die Hard that then, eventually, shifted over to Die Hard.”
This isn’t new for the Die Hard franchise, as the majority of the previous entries in the series were originally intended for different releases.
Die Hard 2 was based on a novel titled 58 Minutes, which executives bought the rights to and then had a screenwriter insert John McClane into the action of that story.
Die Hard With A Vengeance was almost a Lethal Weapon sequel before Warner Brothers. sold the script and Fox bought it and reworked it, while Die Hard 4.0 was originally a movie called WW3.com (catchy), before also getting reworked to include McClane.
The fifth Die Hard movie – 2013’s A Good Day to Die Hard – was the first Die Hard sequel intended from the get go to be a Die Hard sequel, and was also the very worst of the lot.
di Bonaventura continued:
“What was interesting about our idea was it allowed you the ability to meet the young John McClane and use Bruce. So it was really interesting in that way. So you sort of got to see both versions of him. A bit [like The Godfather Part 2].”
There hasn’t been much talk yet about any of Disney’s plans with the future of the franchises it has bought as part of the Fox merger, aside from the Alien TV series currently in development, so we’ll have to wait and see if Die Hard does continue in a different direction.
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