DIE HARD 6 Gets CONJURING Scribes

The Conjuring screenwriters Chad and Carey Hayes have been brought aboard the currently untitled Die Hard 6 film to rewrite the project from director Len Wiseman.

According to The Tracking Board, which broke the story —

The film is rumored to ve an origin story of sorts, in which we see a younger actor portray McClane as (relatively) regular cop in 1970s New York. Willis’ grizzled take on the character, who has been through a lot over the course of five films, is expected to bookend the movie, which will toggle back and forth between past and present.

The film is being developed by A Good Day To Die Hard director Len Wiseman, and considering the poor reception that last installment of the franchise received, that is not a good sign. And that’s not the only indicator that this may be a bad idea.

Sometimes a prequel can tell an interesting tale that fills in some backstory of characters or the cinematic world they live in, this prequel seems like it will be doing the character a disservice. While we’ve seen McClane’s abilities grow to ridiculous proportions over the course of the Die Hard series to the point where he’s able to launch cars into the sky to knock down helicopters, when we first met him in the original 1988 movie, he was just an average cop got in an extraordinary situation trying to do the best he could. Taking the character back to an earlier time and showing them dealing with some sort of out—of—the—ordinary crisis with over the top heroics undercuts the everyman character as we see him a decade and a half or so later.

If they’re really intent on doing a sequel, how about a straight romance showing McClane and his wife Holly (played by Bonnie Bedelia in the first two Die Hard films) falling in. No terrorists, no gun fights, no ridiculous stunt sequences. But that would require a deftness, a subtly, an imagination that I certainly don’t think director Wiseman possesses.