Die Hard

In the tradition of ScreenCrush series like You Think You Know Movies and You Think You Know TV comes a new YouTube series: Top Five! Each week (or so; we’ve got a lot of other stuff going on), ScreenCrush editor and critic Matt Singer will count down a particular topic from the world of movies (and probably write these introductory posts in the third person).

Over the last 30 years, the terrorists of the world have repeatedly found new ways to torment and intimidate the planet.

This morning’s big Oscar nominations announcement had to contend with an even more major and affecting piece of breaking news. A few days after David Bowie passed into the next dimension, cancer has taken another sixty-nine-year-old Brit from us: esteemed actor Alan Rickman. Flip to the word “arch” in the newest editions of the Oxford Goes To Hollywood dictionary, and there you’ll find a photo of Rickman, single eyebrow raised, his tone of dour bemusement audible even from the printed page. The man gained the most international recognition from a choice role in a certain franchise about a boy wizard, but he was an actor of boundless versatility who gifted audiences plenty of fond moviegoing memories.

Alan Rickman, the tremendously talented British actor behind such iconic roles as Hans Gruber in Die Hard and Professor Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films, has died at the age of 69 following a bout with cancer.

Before he was cast in Die Hard, Bruce Willis was known primarily as the star of ABC’s TV comedy Moonlighting, so he wasn’t the first person Hollywood thought of to star in their big action movie. In fact, before they offered Willis the role, they actually approached Arnold Schwarzenegger hoping to turn Die Hard into a Commando sequel. This is just one of the Die Hard facts in the latest installment of You Think You Know Movies!

With Bruce Willis seemingly uninterested in the far-off possibility of yet another Die Hard film, Eric Wilkinson’s dream was all but dead in the water. And while it’s true that he won’t go on to direct a new Die Hard movie, the ad was far from futile for this determined filmmaker.

The hardest part of making it in the business of show is getting started. For someone on the outside looking in, getting a foot in the door can be all but impossible without a few well-placed connections. One determined Die Hard fan, independent writer/producer Eric D. Wilkinson, took a decidedly unorthodox back route in his efforts to engineer the planned sixth installment in the popular action franchise. The man had a pitch, and a good one at that, but he had no way of getting an appointment with a hotshot Hollywood executive. So he did what he could, and left the pitch where he could be assured someone would see it.

“Before he died hard, John McClane first had to learn how to live hard.” Can’t you just see it? Len Wiseman can. Eight years after directing Live Free or Die Hard, Wiseman is now looking to make a Die Hard prequel.

Great news if you’re a Die Hard fan, disappointing news if you aren’t a fan of the more recent sequels: Die Hard 6 is officially in the works, with Live Free or Die Hard director Len Wiseman returning to take Bruce Willis’ John McClane on another action-packed adventure. But the current plan for the next installment in the franchise is to take it back in time, with Die Hard 6 serving as a prequel of sorts.

The story goes that, in 1975, author Roderick Thorp took a night off from writing to catch a movie. His flick of choice, ‘The Towering Inferno’, is the fictional account of a hulking 138-story structure named The Glass Tower and an electrical fire that traps a gathering of revelers celebrating the building’s opening. Thorp was enthralled with the storyline involving the tower architect, portrayed