Die Hard With A Vengeance (1995) is a great movie and arguably the best masterpiece sequel ever. It is the third film in the popular Die Hard franchise, in which Bruce Willis collaborated with John McTiernan, the first film’s director.
The movie became the top-grossing film in 1995 and is currently recognized as the franchise’s finest sequel. This success is followed by Live Free or Die Hard (2007) and A Good Day to Die Hard (2013). But do you know Die Hard with a Vengeance was originally written as another famous movie? It might be shocking to hear, but it is what it is.
Die Hard Vengeance was Almost Lethal Weapon 4
Die Hard With a Vengeance, the third installment of the Die Hard series was initially scripted as the fourth entry in the Lethal Weapon series (starring Mel Gibson and Danny Glover as LAPD detectives). Jonathan Hensleigh, known for writing Jumanji and Armageddon, had authored a script called ‘Simon Says,’ originally intended as a project featuring Brandon Lee.
Even at that point, Hensleigh’s script closely resembled what eventually became Die Hard With A Vengeance. The script “Simon Says” featured an unlikely duo working together to stop bomb threats across the city. But after Lee’s unfortunate death in 1993 on The Crow set, Warner Bros. bought the script and modernized it into the Lethal Weapon series.
When Mel Gibson became disinterested in quickly returning to the Lethal Weapon franchise, Warner Bros. decided to sell the script to Fox. There, the script caught the attention of Bruce Willis, who greenlighted the script. Later, Hensleigh was hired to turn the script into the third Die Hard film, and Samuel L. Jackson was cast in the partner role alongside Bruce Willis‘s character, McClane.
Samuel L. Jackson’s Zeus Carver was Initially a Woman
In Jonathan Hensleigh’s original Simon Says script, the hero who was ultimately transformed into John McClane – a young NYPD cop named Alex Bradshaw. Meanwhile, he partnered with a black man named Zeus Carver, who was actually a woman in his script. This was the first thing to change when Simon Says was rewritten as Lethal Weapon 4.
Hensleigh also revealed that Fox executives were initially against the idea of Zeus being a black character. They even requested him to modify the character as white or Asian. Despite this, a significant portion of the Simon Says script reportedly remained unchanged in Die Hard with a Vengeance, with the major addition to the plot being the inclusion of the film’s gold heist storyline.
Well, the changes weren’t that minor in the script because, in the DVD commentary, Hensleigh says that the first hour of the film is his (word for word) original Simon Says script, with only the character names being changed. But in this case, the whole character has been transformed.
Source: Legends Revealed
