You could be forgiven for thinking that Hollywood had seen sense in deciding to let the idea of a John McClane origin story be buried over time, but Live Free or Die Hard/Die Hard 4.0 (delete where applicable) director Len Wiseman has revealed in an interview with Slashfilm that Die Hard: Year One is very much still alive.
In the exclusive interview, Wiseman said that he was still working on the script for Year One, and suggested that Bruce Willis would have a say in picking the actor who’d play his 1970’s incarnation.
Wiseman reiterated that the film will follow split timelines, stating “The core idea has not [changed] at all. It’s still working in parallel, cutting back and forth, what we see in the ‘70s has ramifications on present day Bruce. That hasn’t changed at all.”
This means that we’ll get to see more of McClane’s relationship with Holly Gennaro, his estranged wife, who was so integral to the stakes of the 1988 classic, and who hasn’t been seen since Die Hard 2: Die Harder. Wiseman all but guaranteed it by saying “There is [a young Holly]. I will tell you there is” and that “There may very well be [a reunion]”.
So when will we get to see Bruce Willis in that dirty vest for what could be his final outing as the former everyman? On this Wiseman said “Die Hard’s going to be happening fairly soon. No dates. I’ve been asked about dates before and I’m always wrong. The date is when the script is right which is when we all want to go. The script has taken quite a long time. I want it to be right, as everybody does. The truth is we started prepping Live Free or Die Hard when the script was not ready. That process of working on the script as we were shooting the movie is not the funnest thing in the world to do. We pulled it together but nobody wants to go through that again.”
He’s right about that, although we’d rather sit through the jet surfing silliness of Die Hard 4.0 than the lamentable fifth outing, A Good Day to Die Hard.
So what do you make of the news that this is still very much in development? Yippee ki-yay or Yippee ki-nay? As always, let us know in the comments section.
