Transformers vs Die Hard IV in 2007

20th Century Fox has announced that a sequel to the Die Hard franchise will be released on July 29th 2007, just five days before Transformers plans to take it bow. The movie, titled "Live Free or Die Hard" stars Bruce Willis and is directed by Len Wiseman (Underworld).

The plot is retired John McClane must stop terrorists from disrupting the countries computer intrastructure over the course of three days, with the July 4th holiday being a component of the story.

This is probably bad news for Transformers producers who, until now, had virtually no competition for their release date, especially after the Fantastic Four sequel caved a few weeks earlier and bumped their desired release date to a few weeks after.

for these expensive "tent-pole" films, usually the companies like to only have one per 7 day period whenever possible. We already saw this year with the July 28th release of Superman Returns followed by July 4th release of Pirates of the Caribbean, that the market can bear to huge releases in the same one week period, but one does have to wonder that if those two titans hadn't gone head to head, how much more money would each have made? In this case, Pirates won the fight hands down, but that doesn't mean that could happen next year. I doubt neither Fox nor Paramount will blink first. I think that Fox will decide to release Die Hard 4 on Wednesday 7/27/06 just to squeeze a few more buck out before Transformers drops the following Wednesday. Next year should be an interesting fight for box office supremacy.

(source)