A lot of fans are of the firm belief that Die Hard should have remained a trilogy, and not been dusted off for a further two installments well over a decade after Bruce Willis dirtied his trusty white vest for a third time opposite Samuel L. Jackson in 1995’s Die Hard with a Vengeance.
Live Free or Die Hard wasn’t a bad action movie by any means, but it definitely wasn’t Die Hard, with former relatable everyman hero John McClane now throwing cars at helicopters and taking fighter jets down with his bare hands. A Good Day to Die Hard wasn’t great, either, to put it lightly, devolving into yet another bland and formulaic CGI climax. In fact, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that if you showed it to someone with the sound off, they wouldn’t even know it was part of the franchise, given how easily mistaken it could be for a rote buddy movie between a bored Bruce Willis and a bland Jai Courtney.
Any talk of a sixth installment has long since evaporated, but a new rumor claims that an episodic spin on Die Hard is headed to Netflix. That’s the entirety of the summation, though, so there’s no word on how the streaming service managed to acquire the rights to such a valuable property from Disney, who control the brand through the 20th Century Studios subsidiary. As such, take this one with a firm handful of salt given that such a deal would surely be headline news were it to happen.
We know that prequel series Die Hard: Year One was in development for a spell but never gained much traction, and Disney have yet to outline their intentions for the long-running franchise. If an episodic version of Die Hard ends up in the works, though, then it’s a lot more likely to be for Hulu than Netflix.