Antoine Fuqua to Direct Second ‘Die Hard’ in the White House Film?

Recently, Roland Emmerich was circling the script for 'White House Down,' which Sony picked up for $3 Million. It turns out that there's another White House movie that's already in development with a similar "'Die Hard' in the White House" plot and it's called 'Olympus has Fallen.' Gerard Butler is attached to star, and now Antoine Fuqua is in the running to direct.

There's long been a history of competitive movies in Hollywood, with such earlier entries as 'Deep Impact' vs. Armageddon,' 'Dante's Peak' vs. 'Volcano' and - more recently - 'No Strings Attached' vs. 'Friends With Benefits.' But those seem to be slightly more generic jumping off points. Or, at least, they offered more room for diversity than cloning a single film.

Whereas the premise of "'Die Hard' in the White House' means - if both films come to fruition - that it will be much easier to judge which is the better of the two. A decade or two ago, this would have been a riff on 'Air Force One' with a black action lead as our president, but nowadays that seems unlikely. Sony paid three million for their script and didn't attach Denzel Washington first, and it sounds like Butler is the star of the Fuqua version, though - as The Hollywood Reporter notes - neither is close to filming just yet. It will be hard for both not to be better than 'Murder at 1600,' which has an awesomely terrible trailer.