According to Deadline, Legendary has won a multi-studio bidding war for Skyscraper, a China-set action film starring Dwayne Johnson to be written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber (Central Intelligence). Universal will distribute the movie as part of an overall deal.
Billed as a “Die Hard in China” story where one regular man surmounts extraordinary circumstances, the pitch generated multiple seven-figure offers after an auction brokered by WME. Though, for the Die Hard premise to really work, Johnson would have to be believable as an everyman, rather than some sort of retired gladiator or over-sized robot. (Where’s the tension of The Rock being trapped in a skyscraper if he can simply flip the building on its side and do snatch-and-grabs with it?) Beau Flynn will serve as producer, having previously worked with Johnson on Hercules and San Andreas and currently on the Baywatch reboot—all films where the leading man is not exactly a fallible John McClane type.
However, upon further reflection, even John McClane barely resembles John McClane anymore. So, fair enough?