John McClane is dusting off his Beretta and coming out of retirement for a fourth Die Hard, and though it’s been over a decade since he last shot holes through Euro-thieves, Fox is hoping the rickety, irascible cop will provide a sufficient challenge to Autobots and Decepticons – the movie is already scheduled for June 29th 2007, just a few days before Michael Bay’s Transformers do their transforming thing.
Since the Gruber clan is sitting this one out (as is every other character introduced in the previous three movies, now no longer a trilogy), Bruce Willis will now contend with l33t h4x0rz threatening the nation’s computer networks for Whatever Reason, and he’ll do it with the laughably jingoistic title Live Free or Die Hard (which is only moderately better than operating system-ish Die Hard 4.0). McClane gets appropriately pissed off when his access to slimyslits.com is interrupted, and uses old-fashioned knuckle sandwiches and 9mm slugs to smash through the firewall of these hi-tech terrorists.
Underworld(s) director Len Wiseman is leaving the black leather behind (we hope) for the film, which will kinda need to have a swift and unproblematic shoot and post-production to make the studio’s all-important release date. No other casting has been announced, though there was a recent rumor that Jeepers Creepers victim Justin Long would take a role as either a computer genius or the young son of McClane (or just maybe – bum-bum-BUM – both).