Following the first movie in 1989, the A Good Day to Die Hard, the fifth movie in the series, the New York cop had turned into a full-on action hero.
Following the 2013 movie, there were talks to strip back the series and develop a movie that followed John McClane before he was dealing with ingenious anarchists. The project was titled Die Hard: Year One, and it took on many different shapes throughout its struggling development, with the most interesting of which being a Godfather Part II-inspired format. The movie would have been part-sequel, following McClane in the present day, and part-prequel, following McClane's day-to-day life in the 70s (via Deadline). The most recent concept of the project went under the title McClane, only it was unfortunately canceled in 2021.
Why McClane Was Canceled
As McClane has fallen into the trap of one evil European villain after another, looking back at before the night of the Nakatomi Plaza would have been a smart move. Unfortunately, the development of the prequel was put on hold when Disney acquired 20th Century Fox in 2019. As a result, filmmaker Len Wiseman (Keanu Reeves returning as John Wick. Following that, McClane producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura flat-out said the movie is "not happening" (via Polygon).
Die Hard: Year One Became A Comic Book
A lot of McClane's story already exists in the form of a comic book. The movie was heavily based on Die Hard: Year One, which existed before the movie was in development, the first issue of which was released in 2009. The comic book follows McClane as a New York cop in the 70s and answers a lot of questions that audiences have been scratching their heads over for decades, such as how McClane's iconic saying, "Yippee Ki-Yay, Mother******," came about. There was an equal chance of a Die Hard prequel being great or poorly-received, and though nobody will ever know, the comic book hints that it could have been incredible.
