Yippee-ki-yay, screenwriter! As all struggling writers know, breaking into Hollywood is hard. Really hard. Like, harder than almost everything. You know what’s easier than breaking into Hollywood? Breaking into a skyscraper. Or taking over air traffic control. Or playing a really twisted version of Simon Says. Or launching a cyber-war. Or doing … something in Moscow. Screenwriter Eric D. Wilkinson figured out a way to get Hollywood’s attention. He took out a full-page ad in The Hollywood Reporter to pitch his idea for Die Hard 6. Yes, they’re really is going to be another film in the Die Hard franchise, because Bruce Willis isn’t quite ready to hang up his bloody undershirt. Wilkinson’s ad is an open letter to Willis and producers Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Len Wiseman, and his take on the story begins “Former hero cop John McClane, 60 years old and beat to sh*t, is a convicted felon, being carted off to Federal prison. Why?”
Okay, I’m intrigued. John McClane behind bars, no doubt grumbling a lot because of the ban on smoking, is an interesting way to begin a movie. There’s a lot of back-story in the script idea, because the Die Hard producers want to make a John McClane origin story. Wilkinson wants to keep the focus on Old Man McClane doing what he does best: beating the crap out of people. And where better for some mayhem than a maximum security penitentiary in the middle of a prison riot? Of course, being a Die Hard film this is no ordinary prison riot: it’s merely a carnage-filled distraction so a bunch of bad guys can escape from prison and carry out some sort of terrorist plot. “However, the one thing terrorists didn’t count on was the one man who is always in the wrong place at the wrong time…and when it comes to John McClane, old habits die hard.”
