FOX has been plotting a Die Hard prequel that tells the origin story of John McClane. Sometimes it seems like if you were to pick a random handful of escapist action movies from the past twenty years, the only movies that would be the least “just like Die Hard” would be the Die Hard sequels Live Free or Die Hard and A Good Day to Die Hard.
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Normally these kinds of pitches are heard in closed Hollywood boardrooms, but evidently Wilkinson wasn’t able to get a meeting, so he took out this ad instead. At the moment, only producer Len Wiseman is keeping Die Hard 6 (Die Hard: Year One) alive, Willis hasn’t been attached to the movie and it has no greenlight, so the only thing for sure is that Eric D. Wilkinson spent hundreds of dollars on a really public gamble for a job he probably won’t get.
The movie follows McClane, who is now 60, as he’s being sent off to federal prison for unspecified reasons. After a few digging, McClane comes up with a suspect in the crime but he gets away before the arrest can be made. Independent film producer Eric D. Wilkinson feels the same way and took out an ad in The Hollywood Reporter that shares this opinion, as well as his pitch for another Die Hard sequel. The rule-breaking McClane and his superior Winshaw butt heads. The case goes cold and is never solved. When McClane makes unprovable accusations about Winshaw he is transferred to the city’s bleakest division.
John McClane can not be killed, and the same goes for the “Die Hard” franchise. While McClane is out of the country, the remains of Clarence Sutton are discovered, not only with DNA evidence linking Sutton to the murder of Ethan Peller, but additional evidence that ties John McClane to Sutton’s killing.
Read the full ad below. The investigation is being run by a young detective named Stan Winshaw. McClanes wife Holly (with whom he has reconciled) has been working on his appeal and she believes she has evidence that Winshaw is to blame, but before she can present the new evidence a riot breaks out in the prison where McClane is being held.
By nightfall, inmates control the facility, holding Holly McClane and many other hostages. We soon learn that the riot itself was a distracting subterfuge… part of a plan to break both Al-Maqdisi and bin Saeed out of prison so they can help complete a horrific new terrorist attack in NY City. Deadline reported that many screenwriters were hopeful about getting the gig, but one writer has gone to great lengths to show his value. When news that a sixth Die Hard was on its way started making the rounds in Hollywood’s back rooms in mid-October, Wilkinson knew that if the sixth installment provided an origin story for John McClane it should be a story about the McClane he remembered, not the almost invincible one.
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Wilkinson said his script would return the series to its less preposterous roots.
