A Good Day to Die Hard: Fox Chief Teases Sequel Details
Posted 05.01.12 by Ryan
Next year will see the release of A Good Day to Die Hard and, this time, John McClane (Bruce Willis) is getting help from an unexpected source. In 2007's Live Free or Die Hard, Willis was trying to rescue his estranged daughter (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) from cyber-terrorists, but A Good Day finds Willis meeting up with another of his estranged progeny, his son Jack. Jai Courtney (Spartacus: Blood and Sand) was cast in the role of Jack in February, which was described as "more of a hardass than his father."
That's basically the description Tom Rothman recently gave Collider at CinemaCon, where the 20th Century Fox chief spent a few days dishing about several upcoming Fox properties, among them A Good Day to Die Hard. Rothman admitted that he loves the Die Hard sequel, citing two reasons why the fifth installment will be "new" to audiences.
I love this one. It’s called A Good Day to Die Hard, and two things make it new: 1. John McClane, the ultimate American hero, goes to Russia. So talk about a fish out of water, he’s completely out of water. And 2. It’s really a father-son story, which is that John McClane’s been a great cop his whole life but he’s been a pretty lousy father. He has a grown son who he’s not really been in much touch with, and McClane thinks the son’s a f**k up — that’s a technical term. So he goes to Russia, he thinks, to bail his son out of jail, and it turns out the son’s not a f**k up, he’s the antithesis of that. In fact, the apple has not fallen far from the tree, the apple has not fallen from the tree, which is that the son is a badder ass John McClane than John McClane.
Live Free or Die Hard paired Willis with Justin Long, who played a computer hacker whom Willis had to protect during the movie's many action sequences. However, as Rothman points out, A Good Day to Die Hard will instead essentially utilize two John McClanes... so, double the action.
It comes to the point in the story where they’re basically the most wanted men in the entire Soviet Union, and it’s the two of them against all of the bad guys. I’ve just gotta say, it’s a classic, classic Die Hard.
Written by Skip Woods (X-Men Origins: Wolverine), A Good Day to Die Hard is being directed by John Moore (Max Payne, The Omen). Let's hope that Rothman is right about it being a "classic," though we won't know for sure until February 14th, 2013.