'Die Hard' Director John McTiernan Says There Are No Movie Studios Left

John McTiernan is one of the most interesting people in all of Hollywood. He made some of the biggest movies of the 80s and 90s, though his career waned in the early 2000s when he failed to achieve the box office success he had enjoyed the previous decades. In a crazy twist, he actually went to jail for spying on his Rollerball provider in 2013 but went home to serve out the rest of his sentence on house arrest. Now, McTiernan is back and circling some projects to direct. But the Hollywood he's returned to could not look any different. He recently sat down with Forbes to discuss his career and the state of the industry today. In reading that interview, I was pleasantly surprised when he came out so strongly in support of the theatrical experience. Read More: Hollywood Needs to Prioritize Research and Development or It Will DieHe said, "It’s a significant thing, and it’s a significant thing politically. It’s actually pretty well documented that the experience of seeing a drama, a movie, or a play in a group of other people is a completely different experience than seeing it alone. Enormous numbers of hormones exchanged and all sorts of information that goes in between people in the audience. It will happen again, we have not watched the end of the agora, the public space.”McTiernan hopes the movies he's working on now are better than the last two he put into theaters. He said, “I gave up working on bad movies, the last two films I made were terrible. I hated working on them. I knew they were bad, I was hired to fix them, and then they wouldn’t let me shoot that. And they wouldn’t let me shoot what I had fixed. They had just used me to tell the studios that I had fixed it for them. Anyway, I decided I wasn’t going to fix someone else’s bad movie.”And these bad movies are not just his own, but reflective of how he views the industry.In the interview, he stated, “As I said, there’s no studio left, really.”In McTiernan's mind, the way forward is independent financing. That's because all the diverse studios have been homogenized, like the car industry. He elaborated on this idea, saying, “Why can’t you tell a difference between a Toyota, or a Volvo or a Peugeot, or a Ford or something manufactured in Korea? Because they’re all the same marketing. They all make exactly the same cars, they’re identical. Because none of them are car makers, they’re in the money business. They guarantee to bring the most money back to the owners that they work for. That’s exactly the same situation in the film industry.” He has distinct reasons this is happening, and it has to do with who's all in charge now and how they operate within the culture. McTiernan said, “The filmmakers all fought because they thought they were participating in the culture at the time, no matter how crude various heads of studios were. They silently knew they were participating in the culture and they were proud of it actually. People running it now are not participating in the literature of the time. It’s comic books, it’s garbage. They know it’s garbage, they don’t care. Well, that is a structural problem.”Read More: Ethan Hawke Implores Hollywood to Avoid Generic ArtI found the whole interview with McTiernan to be really engaging and interesting. At 74, he's clearly someone looking back at his legacy and figuring out where he can take it now. I found his vow to never make the same movie twice to be a really interesting one. When you look at his filmography, it has been incredibly diverse and challenging. There are lots of lessons to be gleaned from his experiences, and I hope he's able to find independent financiers for his next endeavors so he gets a chance to continue his contributions to film. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Mar 11, 2025 - 21:29

'Die Hard' Director John McTiernan Says There Are No Movie Studios Left

John McTiernan is one of the most interesting people in all of Hollywood. He made some of the biggest movies of the 80s and 90s, though his career waned in the early 2000s when he failed to achieve the box office success he had enjoyed the previous decades.

In a crazy twist, he actually went to jail for spying on his Rollerball provider in 2013 but went home to serve out the rest of his sentence on house arrest.

Now, McTiernan is back and circling some projects to direct. But the Hollywood he's returned to could not look any different.

He recently sat down with Forbes to discuss his career and the state of the industry today.

In reading that interview, I was pleasantly surprised when he came out so strongly in support of the theatrical experience.

He said, "It’s a significant thing, and it’s a significant thing politically. It’s actually pretty well documented that the experience of seeing a drama, a movie, or a play in a group of other people is a completely different experience than seeing it alone. Enormous numbers of hormones exchanged and all sorts of information that goes in between people in the audience. It will happen again, we have not watched the end of the agora, the public space.”

McTiernan hopes the movies he's working on now are better than the last two he put into theaters. He said, “I gave up working on bad movies, the last two films I made were terrible. I hated working on them. I knew they were bad, I was hired to fix them, and then they wouldn’t let me shoot that. And they wouldn’t let me shoot what I had fixed. They had just used me to tell the studios that I had fixed it for them. Anyway, I decided I wasn’t going to fix someone else’s bad movie.”

And these bad movies are not just his own, but reflective of how he views the industry.

In the interview, he stated, “As I said, there’s no studio left, really.”

In McTiernan's mind, the way forward is independent financing. That's because all the diverse studios have been homogenized, like the car industry.

He elaborated on this idea, saying, “Why can’t you tell a difference between a Toyota, or a Volvo or a Peugeot, or a Ford or something manufactured in Korea? Because they’re all the same marketing. They all make exactly the same cars, they’re identical. Because none of them are car makers, they’re in the money business. They guarantee to bring the most money back to the owners that they work for. That’s exactly the same situation in the film industry.”

He has distinct reasons this is happening, and it has to do with who's all in charge now and how they operate within the culture.

McTiernan said, “The filmmakers all fought because they thought they were participating in the culture at the time, no matter how crude various heads of studios were. They silently knew they were participating in the culture and they were proud of it actually. People running it now are not participating in the literature of the time. It’s comic books, it’s garbage. They know it’s garbage, they don’t care. Well, that is a structural problem.”

I found the whole interview with McTiernan to be really engaging and interesting. At 74, he's clearly someone looking back at his legacy and figuring out where he can take it now. I found his vow to never make the same movie twice to be a really interesting one. When you look at his filmography, it has been incredibly diverse and challenging.

There are lots of lessons to be gleaned from his experiences, and I hope he's able to find independent financiers for his next endeavors so he gets a chance to continue his contributions to film.

Let me know what you think in the comments.