Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2015 August 28

= August 28 =

Die Hard
Is it right/appropriate to list Roderick Thorp as the "creator" of the Die Hard franchise (in the infobox)? I find it a little dubious since only the first film is based off a Thorp work, with the other four films based off of other works by different authors. I mean, yes, other big multi-media franchises are sometimes ghostwritten or have carried on forward without the original author, but their roots to the original literary work are a little deeper. Ian Fleming wrote a dozen Bond novels and also participated in the transition to film. Digging around I can see that there was only one book in the Planet of the Apes franchise, but am I just splitting hairs because the title remained the same from novel - > film? hbdragon88 (talk) 03:54, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, all four sequels use the main character, John McClane, created by Thorp. Die Hard 2 also uses three further characters created by Thorp: McClane's estranged wife Holly (who only gets referred to in later sequels), Sgt Al Powell, and the reporter Thornburg. The villain in Die Hard with a Vengeance is the brother of the villain who died in the first Die Hard ("Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker"), so that's another reference to the original world created by Thorp.
 * All that being said, I don't know what the criteria should be for naming someone the creator of a media franchise, and you probably should discuss this either on the article's talk page, or perhaps at WP's film project's talk page, or even at Template talk:Infobox media franchise. ---Sluzzelin talk  14:45, 28 August 2015 (UTC)


 * (Apologies: I just saw that some of these original characters' names in Thorp's Nothing Lasts Forever, the novel Die Hard is based on, were changed for the film: Joe Leland>>John McClane, Stephanie Leland-Gennaro>>Holly Gennaro McClane, Anton Gruber>>Hans Gruber. See also that article's subsection "Die Hard film adaptation''"). ---Sluzzelin talk  17:00, 29 August 2015 (UTC)