Bruce Willis Will Help Cast a Young John McClane For Die Hard: Year One

Bruce Willis will help find the person to play the younger version of his iconic role of John McClane in Die Hard: Year One. Len Wiseman, who is directing the film, spoke with /Film and confirmed that the prequel film will see Willis help with the casting process.

Wiseman also said that the film will have a young Holly Gennaro alongside McClane, and added “There may very well be” a current-day reunion between Bruce Willis and Bonnie Bedelia. Bedelia’s last appearance in the franchise was in Die Hard 2: Die Harder. The status of McClane’s children Lucy (Mary Elizebeth Winstead) and Jack (Jai Courtney) is not yet known.

Die Hard: Year One will be set in 1979 and center on McClane’s time as a police officer with the NYPD. Wiseman said trhat the premise of the film is to see how “the ’70s has ramifications on present-day Bruce.”

The film is still being written by Carey W. Hayes and Chad Hayes. “Die Hard is going to be happening fairly soon,” Wiseman said. “No dates. I’ve been asked about dates before and I’m always wrong. The date is when the script is right which is when we all want to go. The script has taken quite a long time. I want it to be right, as everybody does. The truth is we started prepping ‘Live Free or Die Hard’ when the script was not ready. That process of working on the script as we were shooting the movie is not the funnest thing in the world to do. We pulled it together but nobody wants to go through that again. I think it’s also more so than any other time, [the script]’s very important. We’ve seen it all. We’ve seen a lot. I think even, say, 10 years ago, I think studios in general were a little bit more willing to put movies like that, franchise movies into production with a sense of ‘we’ll continue to work on the script.’ I think that attitude has changed.”