The man made famous for blowing up 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in theaters everywhere might be returning to the scene of the crime, as Roland Emmerich is in talks to direct White House Down, a project that made headlines last week when Sony Pictures forked over a hefty $3 million for the spec script.
Described as Die Hard in the Oval Office, the film follows a paramilitary invasion of the president’s workplace, so like Air Force One, only terrestrial. Emmerich, whose swath of cinematic destruction includes Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow, would direct White House Down before working on previously announced project Singularity over at Columbia Pictures.
The financial buzz surrounding the film is another notch in the belt for its writer, James Vanderbilt, who scripted Sony's upcoming summer blockbuster The Amazing Spider-Man. He was also the penman behind David Fincher’s twisty 2007 thriller Zodiac and is currently working on an American adaptation of the Red Riding crime series.
Deadline reports that White House Down is set to begin production sometime in the fall.
