The biggest surprise about the news that Fox would be making a sixth Die Hard movie isn’t that they’re doing it – studios are going to keep milking established properties as long as they can – but that it would reportedly be a prequel, likely telling the story of a young John McClaine.
— len wiseman (@LenWiseman) October 15, 2015
What’s surprising about that is that it comes in the wake of a one-two punch of news about similar stories. First there was the disappointing (to put it mildly) box office debut of Pan, which went back to tell Peter Pan’s origin. Then there was the news that a similar Robin Hood story that’s been in development was being pushed back. The story was that director Matthew Vaughn had to commit to a Kingsman sequel, but it has the smell of “we’re looking for a reason to put the kibosh on this so…sure” face-saving.
Wasn’t the conventional wisdom coming out of Pan’s flopping hard that these sort of Year One stories for established characters had overstayed their welcome? That this was a trend that had played itself out?
How are the studios going to market these movies which *are* origin movies – at least in some way, shape or form – without making them *seem* like origina movies? And how are they going to deal with the word-of-mouth fallout if they fall down at the box office when people feel mislead?
All that remains to be seem, but I’m a bit surprised to see this hasn’t quite been abandoned quite yet.
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