A sixth Die Hard, tentatively titled Year One, was announced last year to a predictable chorus of online disapproval (although Bruce Willis cheerfully endorsed the project). Now director/producer Len Wiseman has been discussing the developing plans further. See if he puts your minds at rest.
Wiseman is calling Year One "a prequel/sequel", because he's insistent on not simply re-casting the franchise with a younger actor. "I wasn’t going to do it without Bruce," he tells Collider. "I’m also not going to do it with Bruce being a cameo bookend gimmick. It’s really working into the plot, with the ‘70s having ramifications on present-day Bruce. It inter-cuts in a very fun, imaginative way with present-day John McClane.”
Riffing, kind of, on the Christmas settings of the first two _Die Hard_s, Wiseman says Year One will be set on New Year's Eve, 1979, making the John McClane of this film only eight years younger than the Willis of Nakatomi Plaza. The origin story aspect isn't that distant from the current earliest adventure then, making casting the young McClane tricky.
"It has to be somebody that has the swagger and the confidence, but also the charm, the wit, the charisma and the toughness," says Wiseman. "It’s asking a lot, especially in somebody that’s younger. It has to feel like the guy owns it, rather than is trying to put it on." He says he thinks an unknown is probably the way to go.
And as for the general thrust of the project, Wiseman reveals it came out of conversations he and Willis had on the set of Die Hard 4.0. "[We talked] about what he put into the character for Die Hard 1," he recalls. "That character comes in with so much baggage, emotionally, and experience. He’s already divorced [actually not quite true, that], he’s bitter, his Captain hates him and doesn’t want him back. So, what created that guy? We’ve never seen the love story... when he met Holly, or when he was a beat cop in ‘78 in New York when there was no chance of him making detective. It’s always been something I’ve been thinking about, and now we’re doing it."
Die Hard: When John Met Holly? Even the New Year setting is in place. It's still very early days for Year One, however. Transformers' Lorenzo Di Bonaventura is producing through his own Di Bonaventura Pictures, but he's so far the only another name officially announced, with even a screenwriter not yet in place. More news as we get it.