A 20th Century Fox source has told
AICN that the next John McClane film will be titled
Die Hard 24/7, and that
Fantastic Four Reborn will be the title of the
Fantastic Four reboot that was announced last year. No confirmation yet from an official source but they sure sound like accurate Fox titles. I don't particularly hate the FF title, I mean at the end of the day, it was either going to be
Fantastic Four Begins or
Fantastic Four Returns, etc. Can you come up with anything better? But I really do hate the Die Hard title. What does it even mean - Die Hard all the time?
Fantastic Four is one of two reboots 20th Century Fox are currently developing from their Marvel characters, the other being Daredevil and time isn't on their side. The reason for the haste being their creative development deal on these characters (and X-Men) is that they must keep making movies with the characters within a certain number of years otherwise the rights revert back to Marvel, and they lose a proven profitable franchise. Akiva Goldsman is overseeing the reboot as producer with Michael Green (
Smallville, co-writer of
Green Lantern) putting together the screenplay. Goldsman is the former screenwriter of
Batman & Robin, and more recently produced
Hancock, The Losers and
Jonah Hex - which aren't four films that fill me with much hope considering he is making the big decisions on this one. No other word yet on Fox's approach but we are hoping they have looked closely at what Marvel Studios have been doing lately and will up the seriousness of the FF at least three notches higher than the kid friendly previous series. They simply got it so wrong the first time around that this one needs to feel wholly different, and they need to look at the directors and the acting talent Marvel have been able to attract. They recently looked to Matthew Vaughn again on
X-Men and that's precisely the kind of hungry mind this series needs moving forward.
In the case of the fifth Die Hard film, we know a little more about what we can expect. Skip Woods (
Hitman, Swordfish)
is writing the script that is expected to film next year with a tentative release date of Summer 2012 attached. Woods also co-wrote the new
A-Team movie and all the crazy action we've glimpsed at in the trailer is partly his responsibility, so expect more of the over-the-top superhero McClane you saw in
Live Free or Die Hard. Bruce Willis has pushed for the new movie at Fox and has made it known he wants previous director Len Wiseman to return to helm. He has also talked about the film working on a 'worldwide scope'. And you just have to wonder if everyone at Fox has totally forgotten why the original Die Hard movie worked so well. The Die Hard franchise works when it focuses on the everyday guy with the big heart who out of will power, smart-thinking and some plain good old fortune, manages to save the terrorist threat in a confined building - but only barely. A bruised and battered hero the man we would all hope we would become if we were stuck in a terrorist threat. That's what a Die Hard movie is, and sadly it sounds like we won't be getting that once again.