Die Hard 5 needs a new director

By Sean O'Neal | August 1, 2011 | 9:10pm

Aux Features Film

Elder rage action franchise Die Hard has encountered an unexpected hiccup in production by losing director Noam Murro, the Smart People filmmaker who used the unlikely bona fides accorded by the blockbuster he didn’t actually make yet to leverage his way into getting another sequel, 300: Battle Of Artemisia. But the studio is pressing forward anyway with a new, hastily assembled short list of people they’d like to see pushing Bruce Willis in front of fireballs. According to Deadline, the leading contenders include Fast Five’s Justin Lin and Drive’s Nicolas Winding Refn, whose names have begun appearing so often on lists of this nature, they’re like the ringers thrust into police lineups, so probably don’t pay any attention to them.

Much more likely is that Fox will go with someone like Max Payne director John Moore, a filmmaker with a long history at the studio and no troublesome “style,” which makes him easily adaptable to formulas like these. And then there’s the wild card, Attack The Block’s Joe Cornish, whose presence here seems to be pure critic-bait. And it worked! Om-nom-nom-nom. Anyway, expect to hear a name (most likely Moore’s) attached very soon to this fifth film in the series, which will find Willis’ John McClane once again rousted out of a nap and forced to fight an outsized threat all by himself. This time, however, the action takes place in Russia, jumping the gun on the Police Academy rule of sequels by two whole movies