9 Bizarre Early Drafts That Nearly Destroyed Your Favourite Films

4. Die Hard Was Nearly Commando 2

Commando is a fun, violent and insanely quotable Schwarzenegger action flick, but it's got nowhere near the staying power of Die Hard, which reinvented Christmas films as we know them, and catapulted Bruce Willis into the limelight. But Commando's existence briefly jeopardized Die Hard's in a big way. So what exactly happened? Well, Die Hard only came about when Arnold Schwarzenegger turned down a Commando sequel. The sequel was based on the 1979 novel Nothing Lasts Forever, written by Roderick Thorp. Nothing Lasts Forever tells the story of a New York detective who battles German terrorists who manage to take over a skyscraper. Sounds pretty familiar, right? Unfortunately for Arnie (and fortunately for the rest of us) the lukewarm box-office performance of Conan The Destroyer caused him to drop out of the project. The script was considered so good, however, that it was tweaked around and re-purposed as standalone film. At this point Willis was cast and the rest is history. As interesting as a Commando sequel might have been, there's no way its worth the Die Hard trade-off.