Exhibiting the devil-may-care attitude of a man backed into a corner and with nothing left to lose, Die Hard director John McTiernan has unveiled the details of his newest projects while in bankruptcy court. McTiernan recently spent 10 months in prison for basically being Tinseltown’s own Richard Nixon, but being released has only compounded his troubles as he faces the liquidation of his assets in a Wyoming bankruptcy court.
McTiernan and his wife recently declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in an attempt to avoid foreclosure on their 3,254-acre ranch, only to have the bank counter-file in an attempt to have the case converted to a much more punitive Chapter 7 bankruptcy. As part of a four-hour hearing yesterday, the topic of McTiernan’s Hollywood comeback was breached as a potential source of revenue by which he could pay his debts, including alimony to an ex-wife, 10 percent to a former agent, and damages to two unnamed individuals who sued McTiernan for his role in a 2011 car accident.
McTiernan testified that he had “put out [a] shingle” and written three spec scripts, one of which he claims already has a buyer. Hannibal Pictures has allegedly bought McTiernan’s script Warbirds, with John Travolta supposedly already signed on to play the lead, and Queen Latifah and Johnny Knoxville in talks for supporting roles. McTiernan also claims he’s in talks to re-write an already completed script and to direct a project set to begin filming in January.
All this is on top of the already announced Red Squad. Nicolas Cage has been linked to that particular project, but no formal casting announcements have been made as of yet. Whether all this is true—or just a desperate attempt at (once again) delaying the inevitable—remains to be seen. But short of crashing a helicopter into the courtroom and escaping in the ensuing chaos, this is probably the best that McTiernan can do right now.