Each year during the holidays, a familiar debate springs up: Is Die Hard a Christmas movie? And while it seems to be an unlikely and rather tame question, audiences have very strong opinions about whether or not this cult-classic action thriller, which follows Bruce Willis’s John McClane and his desperate attempt to rescue his wife and 30 other hostages at a holiday party in a business tower in downtown LA on Christmas Eve, constitutes a Christmas film. While it might not be a feel-good Christmas movie like It's a Wonderful Life or even a funny one like Elf, many people assert that it counts. After all, it takes place on Christmas Eve and Christmas is very much a big part of the story.
Is Die Hard based on a book?
While the Christmas debate is fun to trot out each holiday season, there is an even more interesting literary history behind the Die Hard franchise than most fans realize. Die Hard is based on the book Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorpe, about a retired detective named Joe Leland who must rescue his daughter, Stephanie Gennaro, from terrorists when they take over her high-rise office building in LA on Christmas Eve during the office holiday party and hold all of the partygoers, including Stephanie and her children, hostage. Joe just happens to be visiting the office, but he manages to sneak away from the terrorists while barefoot and, with only his police-issue pistol and a radio connecting him to an LAPD officer named Al, takes out the terrorists.
The book was the sequel to a previous novel called The Detective, which starred a younger Joe Leland and was also made into a hit movie in the 1960s starring Frank Sinatra. Rumor had it that Sinatra was excited for Thorpe to write a sequel because he wanted to adapt and star in it. However, by the time Thorpe produced Nothing Lasts Forever 13 years later in 1979, Sinatra was too old to play the physically demanding role. In 1988, producers decided to adapt the book (now out of print) for film, making a few key changes, and call it Die Hard.
What are some other differences between Die Hard and Nothing Lasts Forever?
They aged down the protagonist, John McClane, and made it so that he is rescuing his estranged wife, Holly Gennaro, from the terrorists.
