With Die Hard surviving obstacles that would have felled greater projects, 20th Century Fox finally began production on its long awaited action film. Director John McTiernan was not satisfied with the script and thus production began before the script was completed. The original book had the crimes being undertaken by terrorists against a building owned by a German company. One of the first changes made by McTiernan was to change the owners of the building to a Japanese company to take advantage of the American belief at the time that Japanese companies were buying up the country. Thus, the action would take place at Nakatomi Plaza.
It just so happened that Twentieth Century Fox was building a new office building on its lot. McTiernan thought that the fortuitous timing would give him an easy place to film; after all, wouldn’t Fox easily approve the use of its building by one of its own productions? It turned out that it would, but it wouldn’t do it easily. The negotiations would drag on far longer than McTiernan had hoped or needed.
McTiernan never liked the idea of the criminals being guided by politics and terrorism. A few weeks into filming, he finalized the script, making the terrorism a red herring meant to disguise a theft. Since many scenes had already been filmed using the requirements of the original script, a few continuity errors made their way into the film. The compressed production time and budget didn’t allow for many reshoots, so the production pushed ahead. With the film’s casting and script issues, nobody was expecting much from the film. Fox desperately needed the movie to become a hit. By July 1988, Fox could only cross its fingers and hope for the best.
