Die Hard Prequel Has Been Renamed McClane And Will Star Bruce Willis

You know how whenever somebody brings up Sylvester Stallone’s long-running Rocky films, it’s only a matter of time before someone else says, “Yeah, but the fifth one sucks”? That’s the sort of feeling that greets A Good Day to Die Hard, released in 2013 and, coincidentally, the fifth in the Die Hard series. But in the same way that Stallone offered up an apology of sorts with Rocky Balboa, Bruce Willis appears to be wanting to do the same with the newly-retitled McClane (from the original Die Hard: Year One).

Directing is Len Wiseman, who did a pretty great job with the fourth film, Live Free or Die Hard, from a script by Chad and Carey Hayes, writers of The Conjuring. And then, more importantly, the focus seems to be very much on character. In an exclusive interview with EmpireOnline, producer Lorenzo diBonaventura noted, “You can tell our intention by the fact that the title page we handed in says, McClane. We want you to get invested in John McClane more than ever before.”

die-hard-bruce-willis2 — 20th Century Fox

The film is inspired by an eight-issue comic miniseries written by Howard Chaykin that told of the early exploits of a young McClane. The idea of both is to tell a story of the past that’s intercut with the present-day version of the character. As such, it serves as both a prequel and sequel to what’s come before, though one point Lorenzo makes is that anyone thinking Bruce’s role is a small one would be mistaken. Admitting that he doesn’t know how you could really make a Die Hard movie without the actor, he notes, “The idea that he’s not very sigificant in this movie is not accurate at all. We are going to explore John McClane in his twenties, but just as prominent is the 60-year-old version.”

And we are going to explore McClane through his previous film appearances by providing the following guide to, and behind the scenes look at, every chapter in the series — scroll down to see!

Die Hard (1988)

The one that started it all, as John McClane (Bruce Willis), in LA to visit his estranged wife (Bonnie Bedelia) at her company Christmas party, finds himself a-s-deep in terrorists as Nakatomi Plaza becomes the victim of a brilliantly-conceived heist. His opponent is one Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), one of the greatest movie villains ever created. Thirty years on and it remains one of the greatest action films. Period (that one’s for you, Sean Spicer).
“Die Hard,” Bruce related to us, “is probably the closest I’ve come to showing what is in my heart on screen. Even though I’m acting, a lot of what is in me came through. I really wanted to play a vulnerbale guy. I didn’t want to be a superhero who’s a larger than life guy that nobody really knows. I don’t know any superheroes. I know guys who are afraid and have anxiety, and I think you know people like that, too. That’s what I wanted to play. I really wanted to be honest about the moment you go through when you think your life is about to end. I wanted to play somebody who was afraid to die.”

Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990)

What are the odds of the same thing happening to the same guy twice? That question is brilliantly asked by John McClane in the middle of the action, which goes a long way in evening the odds of him being caught in the middle of terrorist action again. This time he’s snowbound at Washington DC’s Dulles International Airport, where the bad guys (led by William Sadler’s Colonel Stuart) have taken over air traffic control and will start crashing planes (one of which his wife is a passenger on) if a political prisoner, en route to the airport, is not handed over to him. Sure some of it’s dopey, but Bruce remains great as McClane and the action is superb. Directed by Renny Harlin.
There is a moment in Die Hard 2 where Sadler causes a commercial airliner to crash, killing all of the passengers on board. This became a major bone of contention between the filmmakers and studio. Co-writer Steven de Souza told looper.com, “They said, ‘You can’t kill all those people. We’ll lose the audience. It has to be a UPS plane [with two passengers]. ‘But the test audiences loved the film with the original plane crash scene, so they kept it in. For a while, if you didn’t count George Lucas blowing up Princess Leia’s planet, that was the highest body count movie because of the plane crash with imaginary people in it.”

Die Hard With a Vengeance (1995)

Third in the series, it shakes up the formula and works remarkably well until the climax, which obviously no one could figure out what to do with. But it almost doesn’t matter, as Bruce’s John McClane is teamed up with Samuel L. Jackson’s store owner Zeus Carver. Together, they’re sent all around NYC (oh, yeah, McClane’s marriage has fallen apart again, so he’s back in NY) in what seems to be a revenge scheme from Hans Gruber’s brother, Simon (Jeremy Irons). He and Carver have to figure out riddles and move to another destination to prevent explosives from going off around the city. Simon’s plan may not be what it seems to be (we know it isn’t, but that would be spoiling things).
For co-star Samuel L. Jackson, Die Hard With a Vengeance was actually life-changing, as he revealed to Vogue: “Here’s the thing. Bruce Willis and I were doing Die Hard with a Vengeance when Pulp Fiction came out and we went to Cannes together to watch Pulp Fiction play for the first time. We both thought, ‘Wow, this is great!’ and Bruce said, ‘Yeah, this is good and this film will make you recognizable, but Die Hard’s going to make you a star. Die Hard will change your life.’ And it’s true. Die Hard with a Vengeance was the highest-grossing film in the world that year. That changed the agenda.”

Live Free or Die Hard (2007)

The Die Hard series goes a bit into cartoon/James Bond land with this entry which deals with McClane teaming up with a computer hacker (Justin Long) to take down Timothy Olyphant’s Thomas Gabriel, who has taken over the country’s digital network and is plunging the world into chaos. Directed by Len Wiseman, this is a great (though admittedly silly) adventure that works like gangbusters because it remains a passion project of everyone involved.
In an interview with the BBC, Bruce said of the film’s genesis, “When we started talking about the fourth film, we were able to go through the first three and identify the things we wanted, the values and the qualities, and the things that we didn’t want. For most people, the first film has always been the best film — that was the high watermark of what all the Die Hards, and a lot of action movies, should be and aspire to. But you have to remember that the next two films were done when the sequel business was just starting out. We were flailing wildly when we did the second film. One of the first things we said about Live Free or Die Hard was that we couldn’t be self-referential to any of the other Die Hards or to any of the other action films that have come since Die Hard. [We felt] Die Hard 2 was really self-referential in an almost back-patting way. The third one, Die Hard With A Vengeance — or as I like to call it, ‘Thank God Sam Jackson and Jeremy Irons were in the film’ — was, again, another Die Hard; it had John McClane and it had a lot of cool components, but in my mind I always had the idea to do another film, to take another shot at it, and try to get as close to the first film as possible.”

A Good Day to Die Hard (2013)

This time McClane travels to Moscow to find his cop son (Jai Courtney), who is believed to be a criminal, though it turns out he’s there undercover attempting to protect a Russian government defector. The two of them end up working together to stop a deadly plan from taking place in the region of Chernobyl. We have no hesitation in calling this film terrible, the worst of the series and it’s obvious that nobody — especially Bruce — gives a damn. It makes us sad. Please make this right!
This was the first film in the series that wasn’t based on a previous novel, article or script, which in some ways was nerve-wracking to director John Moore, who related to WeGotThisCovered.com, “There have only been five Die Hard movies in twenty-five years. Can you imagine the number of pitches Bruce has heard? Die Hard in a Submarine, Die Hard in a Donut Shop, etc. The danger is that this character is so attractive. I don’t know about you, but I’d watch him play lawn bowls and find it interesting. But thank god for Bruce, because he just holds back until the story is good enough. So, yeah an original script makes you a little nervous, because it’s one step less authentic. It’s like when the Bonds stopped being Ian Fleming novels and started being whatever we want. We have to be careful that it didn’t just turn into an action movie with John McClane and keep it Die Hard.”
Oops.

McClane (TBA)

This one could represent the opportunity to pump some fresh blood into the Die Hard franchise, restore it to something of its former glory, and wash away the taste of A Good Day To Die Hard. It will serve as both a prequel and continuation of the series, looking at McClane (with a younger actor in the role) in his earlier days with Bruce reprising the part for the present. It’s being directed by Live Free Or Die Hard’s Len Wiseman, and is actually based on an eight-issue comic book miniseries written by Howard Chaykin. The first four issues look at McClane as a rookie cop during the 1976 Bicentennial celebration in NYC, while the last four take place during his first year as a detective during the city-wide blackout of 1977. Presumably the film version will tie events from his past into a present story.
In describing the McClane of the comic, Chaykin told DigitalSpy.com, “He’s a young guy, a marine vet, in his early 20s, who’s come out of the service and joined the NYPD. He’s been on the force for about a year, and he’s still in that training mode.” Also, in the book Howard Chaykin: Conversations he elaborated, “I came up with a criminal underpinning for both events and had a great time doing it. The narrative is all about my feelings about being in New York in the ’70s. The great thing about New York in the ’70s is that it was like what a lot of people think the ’60s were… It really was a scary amusement park.”