The next Die Hard film may be both sequel and prequel.
Deadline is reporting that Die Hard producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura is looking for a screenwriter to develop a script that would allow franchise star Bruce Willis to appear in Die Hard 6 as hero cop John McClane, but also tell the story of McClane’s early days on the force.
Basically, he’ll bookend a story line that will be set much of the action in 1979, when McClane was a cop in gritty New York City and showing how he became a die hard kind of guy.
Fox is currently working on a deal with Live Free Or Die Hard director Len Wiseman to return to the franchise to helm this sixth installment.
Previously, comic book publishers Boom! Studios released in 2009 a four-part miniseries titled Die Hard: Year One which featured McClane facing off against terrorists in New York City during the Bicentennial. A followup miniseries was set during the New York Blackout of 1977.
If this comes to fruition, this would not be the first time that Willis would play an older version of a character while another actor played the younger version of the same character. He did it previously in Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys, the little seen 2000 comedy The Kid and Rian Johnson’s Looper.
Personally, though, this sounds like a terrible idea. The main appeal of Willis’s McClane in the first Die Hard film is that he is pretty much an everyman who rises to the level of badass when presented with an impossible situation. The first film is his origin story. There is no need to go any further back into McClane’s backstory, as it would undercut what we have seen before.
