![]() ![]() That said, a handful of the film’s most memorable characters and scenes are drawn directly from the book’s pages while certain key plot elements are changed, arguably for the better so far as creating an awesome action movie is concerned. Cast as a younger version of the Leland character, now named “John McClane,” a script based on Nothing Lasts Forever became a little movie we know as Die Hard.ĭie Hard the movie, while following the novel’s broad strokes, is all but totally removed from its Joe Leland/ Detective DNA. After Arnie passed, the idea then was modified again, becoming a standalone story and fashioned as a vehicle for a young, up and coming actor not at all known for action movies, Bruce Willis. The story was then reworked as a potential sequel to Commando, the 1985 Arnold Schwarzenegger action flick. When the decision was made to buy the rights to Nothing Lasts Forever and turn it into a film sequel to The Detective, actor Frank Sinatra turned down the opportunity to reprise the Joe Leland role. ![]() The company’s having a Christmas party and the festivities are interrupted by terrorists…. In this new tale, Joe Leland is now retired from detective work and flies from New York City to Los Angeles on Christmas Eve to spend the holiday with his daughter, Stephanie Gennero, who works for a big oil company in a high-rise office building. Thorp penned a sequel, 1979’s Nothing Lasts Forever. The movie was a commercial success and one of Sinatra’s most successful box office outings. The Detective was adapted in 1968 into a feature film starring Frank Sinatra in the title role. ![]() Naturally things don’t go according to any sort of plan and Leland finds himself in big trouble as he peels back layer after layer and discovers the truth behind the secret life of a man which got him killed. It’s here that readers are introduced to Joe Leland, a private detective and World War II veteran who investigates the death of a friend who also served during the war on behalf of his widow. The genesis of the glorious 1988 action classic that is Die Hard traces back to The Detective, a novel written by author Roderick Thorp and first published in 1966. For this latest installment, I’m adding in a dash of flavor as we take a look at novels or other source material that served as inspiration for the popular Die Hard film series, and we can’t do that unless we go all the way back to the very beginning with a book that really has nothing at all to do with any of the Bruce Willis films…. ![]() This time, I’m deviating from the established formula a bit and veering away from novels and such which tend to be novelizations of films or television episodes or instead original stories featuring a film or TV series’ established characters. So far, previous installments of this wannabe regular column-like thing have included looks back at novels based on The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, Planet of the Apes, V, and Space: 1999. After resuscitating this infrequent and haphazardly recurring blog feature last month, here I am in an ongoing attempt to make it more of a “regular thing.” The basic idea is pretty simple: I present a nostalgic look at a favorite series of movie or TV tie-in books, often from days gone by but I’m not opposed to checking out more recent offerings. ![]()
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