Die Hard is an American action film series and media franchise that originated with Roderick Thorp's 1979 novel Nothing Lasts Forever.
All five films revolve around the main character of John McClane (Joe Leland in the original novel), a police detective who continually finds himself in the middle of a crisis where he is both the only hope against disaster and the culprit's target.
[3] Per the franchise's name, McClane confounds repeated attempts to kill him, driving his enemies to distraction, by adding up and exploiting dumb luck.
Mercenaries led by former U.S. Army Special Forces Colonel Stuart (William Sadler) take over the airport communication systems, stranding planes in the air, including the one with McClane's wife.
Farrell tells McClane that the terrorists are actually in the middle of a "fire sale" — a crippling cyber-warfare attack on the national infrastructure: power, public utilities, traffic, and other computer-controlled systems.
By 2015, Live Free or Die Hard director Len Wiseman's self-penned prequel/sequel origin story idea called John McClane gained traction.
[25] Following this model, a deal had been made with Lorenzo di Bonaventura to produce another, similar television programme that revolved around the concept of real-time narration, but for twelve hours instead of twenty-four since Die Hard stories happen over that time frame, saying: "We want you to get invested in John McClane more than ever before".
[26] That summer, Wiseman was in negotiations to direct a standalone mini-series (12 episodes) tentatively titled, "DIE HARD: Year One", based around the BOOM!
Its plot - rumored to borrow heavily from said comic book issues - follows John McClane as a beat cop in New York City early in his career as narrated by Bruce Willis in the present-day.
[35] Tobey Maguire (son in-law of then-NBCUniversal Chairman Ronald Meyer) joined the production team in late Summer.
[38] Between February and April 2019, the production team made revisions to the writing, but insinuated that the project, though supposedly moving forward, was on the studio's backburner.
[42] Actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead said that she was interested in returning as Lucy Gennero-McClane, but later intimated doubt that, due to scheduling,[43] the film would ever get made.
[56][57][58][59] Willis had taken roles that featured the "Die Hard scenario" or implied its namefellow in a number of direct-to-video films since the release of DH5 (filmography).
After confirmation of a DH6 cancellation and the wrap of production on the film Detective Knight: Rogue, Willis's family announced that he had been diagnosed with aphasia and paused his career.
[66][67] The hook in Hensleigh's screenplay that captured the attention of director John McTiernan was the idea of a man being targeted for revenge by someone whose life he had unwittingly destroyed.
[68] Live Free or Die Hard was based on the 1997 article "A Farewell to Arms" written for Wired magazine by John Carlin.
[79] Critic Desson Howe wrote that "Willis has found the perfect vehicle to careen wildly onto the crowded L.A. freeway of Lethal Weapons and Beverly Hills Cops".
Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly stated that while "McTiernan stages individual sequences with great finesse... they don't add up to a taut, dread-ridden whole".
Desson Howe of The Washington Post thought that "the best thing about the movie was the relationship between McClane and Zeus", saying that Jackson was "almost as good as he was in Pulp Fiction".
Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle claimed that the film "is the best in the series, an invigorating return to the style of blockbuster that dominated summers back in the early 1990s".
Critics lambasted the installment for "[entering] generic action movie territory", as written by reviewer James Bernardinelli,[94] with a "cliched [and] uninspired script".
[95] A. O. Scott of The New York Times also commented that the series has taken a downfall with the film: "Everything that made the first "Die Hard" memorable—the nuances of character, the political subtext, the cowboy wit—has been dumbed down or scrubbed away entirely".
And for John McClane, more than a decade before the first Die Hard movie, he's just another rookie cop, an East Coast guy working on earning his badge in New York City during 1976s Bicentennial celebration... and the Summer of Sam.
But when his wife's office holiday party turns into a deadly hostage situation, he has to save her life before he can get home in time for Christmas!
The unconventional fan-favorite movie Die Hard is now an illustrated storybook—complete with machine guns, European terrorists, and a cop who's forced to rely on all his cunning and skills (and the help of a fellow officer) to save the day.
The official description read: Thirty years after the release of Die Hard, a retired John McClane is being pulled back into the game by a dangerous foe he never thought he'd face again—a psychotic serial killer with a theatrical taste for casting his victims in reproductions of Hollywood's greatest and deadliest films!
Faced with impossible choices and unimaginable odds, A Million Ways To Die Hard just may be the last case John McClane ever has.
[113]A number of video games based on the successful movie franchise Die Hard have been released over the years, ranging from beat 'em ups to first-person shooters.