Jennifer Avary
A couple of days back at the TCA’s, Len Wiseman – on deck for the new series “Lucifer” – shed some details on the next “Die Hard” film, the part-prequel part-sequel “Die Hard : Year One”.
Wiseman returns to the director’s chair on this sixth film after helming the fourth in the series, “Live Free or Die Hard”.
Wiseman stated that Bruce Willis would be back – and not just to cameo – for a story that would flash back and forwards between the ’70s and today.
Collider caught up with Wiseman and yanked some more details out of the filmmaker on the project.
On the appeal of the story
“[In the first ‘Die Hard’] He’s already divorced, he’s bitter, his Captain hates him and doesn’t want him back. So, what created that guy? We’ve never seen the actual love story. We know its demise, but we’ve never seen what it was like 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. And it ties in.
Bruce Willis will play a big role
I’m…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. The film itself will take place on New Years’ Eve 1979, so trying to gear things towards that would be fun, if we could come out around the same time, but these movies take their own paths.”
On who could play young John McClane
“It has to be somebody that has the swagger and the confidence, but also the charm, the wit, the charisma and the toughness. 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.”
No word on when the project would get underway.
