The ‘Die Hard’ Prequel Was Killed By the Disney/Fox Merger
Apparently the sixth Die Hard movie is dead. RIP Die Hard 6. You died as you lived. Dying hard.
The most recent Die Hard film, A Good Day to Die Hard opened in theaters in 2013. Then Fox reportedly started developing a sort of hybrid prequel and sequel, one that would feature Bruce Willis, but also feature a young John McClane and showing an origin story for the character. The movie was talked about for years; the last update about it on ScreenCrush was published in 2018.
Then Disney purchased Fox, the studio behind the Die Hard series, and that project fell apart. Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura told Polygon that the film is “not happening.” But, he said, what was “really interesting” was that they “came up with an idea to do it. It was a project that wasn’t Die Hard that then, eventually, shifted over to Die Hard.”
Here was the interesting idea he described:
What was interesting about our idea was it allowed you the ability to meet the young John McClane and use Bruce. So it was really interesting in that way. So you sort of got to see both versions of him. A bit [like The Godfather Part 2].
The Godfather Part II of Die Hard movies sounds ambitious. I am not sure, given the state of the franchise after A Good Day to Die Hard, I would expect that they could actually pull something of that level of quality off. That said, I would not expect Die Hard to stay dead (hard) for long. Disney may not be making this particular Die Hard 6. That doesn’t mean they won’t try something else down the line. They didn’t buy Fox not to make movies out of their most popular franchises.