By After revealing their rather strange shortlist a month ago, Fox have chosen their director for the fifth Die Hard movie. And guess what? It’s the guy who did Max Payne! No, don’t all cheer at once. John Moore reportedly won Bruce Willis’ approval after Noam Murro, the Smart People director previously attached, dropped out in favour of taking the 300 prequel, Battle Of Artemesia. (All this is very encouraging). Moore is a studio director through and through, having worked under 20th Century Fox on all his major projects, which include Behind Enemy Lines, Flight Of The Phoenix and The Omen, alongside the aforementioned Payne fustercluck. Journeyman versatility is probably his biggest strength and he has a solid track record in turning out profitable movies on medium to low budgets (Phoenix being the exception), even if critics – apart from the venerable Armond White – have not been so enthusiastic about the results.
To be fair, Die Hard is not really a ‘director’ project. Nobody wants some auteur getting in the way of John McClane having yet another extraordinarily lousy afternoon, just a steady hand who has a good eye for framing and pacing action sequences, as per John McTiernan. It is, however, difficult to predict how Moore will stand up on that front: Moore’s direction on both Behind Enemy Lines and Max Payne muddled the action with an excess of visual gimmicks. Fingers crossed that the grittier, more urban nature of Die Hard will force him to hold back a little on that front, but then again, the last movie had McClane surfing a fighter jet, so who knows. Die Hard 5 has reportedly been given a budget of about $100m and is planned to shoot in Russia, for whatever reason.
[via Deadline]