20 Things You Didn't Know About Your Favourite Action Movies

13. Die Hard Was Meant To Be A Sequel To Commando

It€™s true. John McTiernan€™s landmark actioner originally started as a sequel to Arnold Schwarzenegger€™s camouflaged-hero movie Commando. At the time Fox commissioned Commando screenwriter Steven de Souza to write a sequel to the 1985 blockbuster and he completed the libretto on-time and to company specifications. The story was inspired by a beloved detective novel by Roderick Thorp called Nothing Lasts Forever, which tells of a retired police officer named Joseph Leland and his plight to rescue the people of Klaxon Oil, whose company is taken over by terrorists. However, the disappointing box-office performance of Schwarzenegger's first attempt at a sequel, Conan the Destroyer, led him to drop out of Commando 2. The script was then repurposed into a standalone action film, and the rest is Hollywood history.