10 Fascinating Backstories Behind Famous Movies
8. Die Hard With A Vengeance Was Very Nearly Lethal Weapon 4
Have you ever sat down to the third John McClane outing, Die Hard With A Vengeance, and thought to yourself, "Hey, Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson have really got a Riggs/Murtaugh/Lethal Weapon thing going on here"?
You wouldn't be the first to make such a comparison.
There's a good reason for it, too, because Die Hard With A Vengeance was originally envisioned as a potential Lethal Weapon 4, long before Lethal Weapon 4 was about Mel Gibson and Danny Glover trying to land a punch on Jet Li.
Die Hard With A Vengeance initially existed as a spec script called "Simon Says" by a writer called Jonathan Hensleigh, see, which producer Joel Silver read and tried to option as the fourth instalment in the Lethal Weapon franchise. Clearly he saw something of the Riggs/Murtaugh relationship in the script's bantering duo and thought it could be perfect for the next chapter in the franchise.
For some reason, though, the sale didn't work out, and director John McTiernan - who directed the first Die Hard flick - eventually nabbed the script for himself, turning it into Die Hard 3. But there is something very Lethal Weapon-esque about the final film, so you can understand how it almost came to be number 4.