Cinematical

In a somewhat unsettling coincidence, an early script for Die Hard 4 – a project which Bruce Willis has apparently committed to shooting this fall – hit the net this week, and many who have seen it are cringing over a scene that takes place in a flooded New Orleans.

The draft reviewed by Latino Review was written by Mark Bomback, and is actually an adaptation of an existing script called – wait for it – World War 3.com. This draft is currently undergoing a rewrite by frequent Willis clean-up man Doug Richardson, so it would seem highly likely that all references to New Orleans would be wiped from any draft used for shooting. Still, it's not a little eerie to read about what was to have been.
 
John McClane, the rebel policeman played by Willis in the three previous incarnations, has moved on from the NYPD; he's now "divorced, he's much older, in and out of Alcoholic's Anonymous" – and, natch, he's working for the Department of Homeland Security. It's McClane's job to go after hackers, and we just happen to drop in on him as a team of vaguely Eurocentric cyber pranksters are plotting a massive operation.

As McClane is transporting an (unrelated) hacker from New York to Washington D.C., the cyber terrorists strike, and within hours, the NYC transit system, the NYSE, and the systems controlling the nation's ATMs have all crashed. The hacker in McClane's custody figures out that the other hackers are following the instructions in a book (written by yet another hacker) called, How to Crash an Empire in Three Days. The film then turns into a buddy movie of sorts, as McClane and his criminal charge traipse about the country looking for the real e-evildoers.

This is where the whole enterprise gets prophetic. The good hacker predicts that something bad is going to go down in New Orleans: the empire-crashing how-to said something about splitting the country in two, and if one was to bomb the Port of New Orleans, it would shut down the Mississippi River and essentially do just that. So McClane and his new friend head down there – only to watch an explosion on the Huey P. Long Bridge, one that Latino Review describes as "beyond massive, flipping nearby vessels and sending 70 ft waves in both directions", and presumably wrecking havoc similar to what I've been seeing on CNN all week.

It goes without saying that this scene would be impossible to film at this point – but it's still fascinating to read about, if for no other reason than that it strikes one more blow to various officials' "who woulda thunk it?" defense.

[via Libertas]