I am aware there is a Twitter hastag (#betterdiehardtitles), but I didn’t examine it (besides my editor’s Tweets) in hopes of maintaining the integrity of my list. One look at some of the entries below and it will be immediately clear that I had no help with this piece.

Originally, Noam Murro was hired to film a 75-year old John McClan fighting bad guys in Russia. However, he jumped ship to direct the much more shirtless 300: Battle Of Artemisia. Then, the studio made the offer to Moore (Max Payne, The Omen) but Bruce Willis wasn’t completely sold. A few directors were brought into consideration, including Attack the Block’s Joe Cornish, Drive’s Nicolas Winding Refn, and Fast Five’s Justin Lin. Ultimately, Moore won over Willis with his ability to stage and shoot practical, non CGI-heavy action scenes without crashing the budget by vaulting a flaming car into it. (Deadline)

John McClane is having a bad day. Not so much a having-to-kill-terrorists-with-little-to-no-weapons bad day, but a bad day just the same. Noam Murro, who was attached to direct Bruce Willis in Die Hard 5, has had to leave the project. It’s reported that a scheduling conflict with 300: Battle of Artemisia will prevent Murro from taking the project, but I prefer to think his unfavorable Amazon customer review of “The Return of Bruno” was the actual reason.

But that won’t slow down Die Hard 5. Behind Enemy Lines and Max Payne director John Moore has already been offered the project. Should he choose to direct, he’ll be working from a script by Skip Woods (X-Men Origins: Wolverine), that sees McClan fighting terrorists in Russia with his two sons. We’re not exactly sure of the plot details, so as of right now let’s assume a McClane family reunion in Nizhny Novgorod in taken under siege. (via The Playlist)

The chosen director Die Hard 5 is Noam Murro, the director of Smart People, a 2008 dramedy that featured Dennis Quaid, Lowell from “Wings,” and Sarah Jessica Parker. I said I admired Willis’ proactivity, not his judgment. Maybe this Murro guy was the last guy Willis interviewed before he had to catch a flight or something. That said, it’s refreshing that the producers (Willis included) looked outside the usual group of one-note action directors. This director may not be a big name, but in the twilight of a franchise’s life, that could be a big blessing.

And the script 20th Century Fox has chosen a script by Skip Woods, about which no details have been divulged, but expect John McClaine to have a bad day and an unnecessarily stylish villain. (Deadline)

In Bruce Willis, Stephen Frears has found his Dink Heimowitz. Willis is in negotiations to join Lay The Favorite, Take The Dog. Based on Beth Raymer’s best-seller, Lay The Favorite: A Memoir Of Gambling, the film is about a cocktail waitress who becomes one of Vegas’s top bookies.

Willis’ Heimowitz character is a former New York bookmaker who coaches Rebecca Hall‘s Raymer. It’s unlikely he will use a car to kill a helicopter in this film. However, he may have  that opportunity soon enough…

While 20th Century Fox continues to look for a Die Hard 5 script that doesn’t suck, Willis has been interviewing directors to helm the project. At the top of his list is Daniel Espinosa of Snabba Cash and the upcoming Safe House. At this rate, we may see John McClane take on terrorists before his 60th birthday. (Vulture)

Bruce Willis is set to begin filming Die Hard 5 next year, if you trust Puerto Rico’s second-largest newspaper “Primera Hora.” I personally only trust their first largest. Latino Review (ooooh how convenient) reports:

According to the newspaper, (which is in Spanish) it quotes Gustavo Rivera Aparicio, who’s credited as general manager of 20th Century Fox offices in PR, as confirming that “Die Hard 5″ will film in Puerto Rico in 2011. The announcement was made jointly with the Puerto Rico Film Commission.

Aparicio says the decision was spurred by the succesful [sic] filming of Fast Five in early 2010, and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides a few months ago.

These is big news, you guys. I just learned that 20th Century Fox has general manager in Puerto Rico. That guy must party so hard in between film shoots. Anyway, I hope this news is true. Live Free or Die Hard wasn’t fantastic, but it was definitely a helluva lot of fun. I say keep on making Die Hards until Willis has to remove his breathing apparatus to sputter out, “Yippee ki yay, motherfucker.”

It looks like John McClane won’t retire from the murdering people in ridiculous ways business anytime soon. The super cop, who was last seen surfing on a jet, is being given another go-’round by 20th Century Fox. The studio is in talks with A-Team screenwriter Skip Woods to pen a fifth adventure for Bruce Willis’s iconic ass-kicker.

Woods is the only appropriate choice to write this film. McClane has already killed terrorists with icicles, giant fans, and gravity on a few occasions. Not to mention the time he killed a helicopter by launching a car at it. Who better to team him with than the writer responsible for a tan fighting a jet miles above the earth? I’m going to be sorely disappointed if this film doesn’t have Bruce Willis tie the muzzle of a rifle into a bow so that it explodes in the gunman’s hands. That’s clearly the direction Fox wants to go in. (THR)