After circling director Stephen Frears‘s Lay The Favorite, Bruce Willis is in talks to join Rebecca Hall in the adaptation of former cocktail-waitress-turned-bookmaker Beth Raymer‘s gambling memoir, and has been interviewing possible directors for Die Hard 5. [The Playlist]
Willis is coming off the just-barely-a-hit RED, and while he’s been bad-mouthed by his Cop Out director Kevin Smith, if you’re Bruce Willis, do you worry about what the Wizard from Live Free or Die Hard has to say? Hell, no. Willis is in negotiations to play Dink Heimowitz, a jerkoff former bookie who mentored young gambler Raymer (played by Hall, whose impressive string of recent performances culminated in a star-making turn in The Town).
Frears’s film is being adapted by his High Fidelity co-writer D. V. DeVincentis and follows the rise of internet gaming, offshore gambling shenanigans, and how Raymer, as a budding gambler in her 30’s, “becomes involved with a group of fiftysomething math geeks in Queens who have worked out a way to rig the sports books in Vegas.” Sounds a bit like the failed Kevin Spacey–Jim Sturgess drama 21. Let’s hope this one is actually entertaining.
After reports hinting at 20th Century Fox’s dissatisfaction with the latest round of Die Hard 5 drafts by Skip Woods (X-Men Origins: Wolverine, The A Team), word ’round the campfire is the Bruce is cutting to the chase and interviewing possible directors. Topping that fabled shortlist is said to be Swedish director Daniel Espinosa, helmer of Snabba Cash (aka Easy Money), and who is making his English-language debut with the Denzel Washington–Ryan Reynolds vehicle Safe House. Given that his debut American feature hasn’t started shooting yet, we can safely assume that Espinosa will wisely focus on that movie while the Die Hard 5 rumors (which die harder than John McLane in Die Hard) ratchet up a notch as more directors find their way onto this wishlist.
How does Lay The Favorite sound to you? Are you looking forward to another Die Hard?