Hollywood’s biggest secret isn’t related to someone’s scandalous misdeeds. The biggest secret is that despite everyone’s best efforts, there really isn’t a way of knowing if a film will be successful either critically or financially. Some producers might claim to have a sense of what people will like and how well a production is going, but until the film is edited and released, there really is no way to know how it will be received. Some easy and seemingly surefire projects fail spectacularly while other difficult, messy and problematic projects turn out to be huge successes. While we now know that 1988’s Die Hard was practically an instant classic, its troubled production might have led one to believe that Twentieth Century Fox had a disaster on its hands.
Is my career over here somewhere?
The story of Die Hard begins decades earlier at around the same time that our previous subject Skidoo was causing headaches for Otto Preminger. Much like Preminger, Twentieth Century Fox was looking to connect with the young people of the day. No longer hamstrung by the strict Hayes Code, studios could now feature more complicated characters in their films. Previously, the police had to be depicted as always being ‘good’ and ‘right’ with little room for anything in between. Criminals had to be either dead or in prison by the end of the picture. The new freedom granted by the ratings system meant that more adult situations and complex characters could now be depicted. Twentieth Century Fox, therefore, purchased the film rights to Roderick Thorp’s crime novels looking to turn them into gritty dramas.
An adult look? Like a stag film?
The Detective was a grittier take on a detective film, featuring a homosexual character and a detective who wasn’t afraid to blur the lines. That it featured Frank Sinatra was even more amazing. The film was a modest hit and spurred Twentieth Century Fox to sign a contract with Sinatra guaranteeing him first right of refusal if another film based on the Roderick Thorp novels were made. None were proposed until nearly twenty years later. Thorp released a new book called Nothing Lasts Forever in 1979 in which the character portrayed by Sinatra was forced to rescue his daughter and grandchildren who were trapped in an office tower. Sound familiar?
There might be some subtext to this picture.
After the blockbuster success of Beverly Hills Cop and its sequel, the studios were rushing to find properties they could turn into mega action franchises. Twentieth Century Fox thought Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Commando was just the film that could spawn an action franchise. Since it already owned the rights to Roderick Thorp’s books, it wanted to turn Nothing Lasts Forever into Commando 2. One thing stood in its way, however. The contract with Sinatra stipulated that he get the first right of refusal to star in any adaptation of Thorp’s novels. He was obviously way too old for the role, but he could force Twentieth Century Fox into making the sequel with him in it. Luckily for them, he declined it, leaving the path open to adapt the book into an extension of the Commando franchise. Arnold Schwarzenegger, however, was uninterested in a sequel.
I won’t be back!
With the Sinatra roadblock lifted and Arnold not on board, Twentieth Century Fox took the basic premise of the Thorp novel and turned it into something completely different- an action film it hoped it could turn into the franchise it desired- Die Hard.
