Con Air Director on Reinventing Die Hard Formula Again With Bride Hard
ComingSoon spoke to Bride Hard director Simon West (Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Con Air) about his latest take on the Die Hard formula. Starring Rebel Wilson and Anna Camp, the film combines the raunchiness of Bridesmaids with wild action and explosions. The film is out only in theaters on June 20, 2025, from Magenta Light Studios.
“For badass secret agent Sam (Rebel Wilson), blending in has never been part of the mission—until she’s maid of honor at her best friend’s extravagant destination wedding. Out of her element and surrounded by high-maintenance bridesmaids and a strict “no weapons” policy, Sam is determined to prove she can be there for her friend—even if emotional support isn’t exactly her specialty. But when a team of mercenaries crashes the party and takes the guests hostage, Sam is thrown into a fight unlike any mission before—one where she can’t risk blowing her cover or ruining the big day. As she takes on the bad guys in a high-stakes battle disguised as a fairy-tale affair, she realizes the real threat might be closer than she thinks. Now, it’s bridezilla vs. bazookas as Sam dodges bullets, brawls in heels, and tries to survive both the armed assailants and the wedding planner’s wrath. Some missions require the perfect cover. This one just requires the perfect dress,” says the synopsis.
Tyler Treese: You’ve done some really fun action movies in the past, and obviously, you helped kickstart female-led action blockbusters with the Tomb Raider movie. But this has a raunchiness factor to it that’s really funny and adds to the experience. How was it finding the right tone for Bride Hard?
Simon West: The tone partly comes from me, but it also comes from who the lead actress is. Rebel has her own style of comedy and her own personality. So some of that rawness comes from her and whoever I work with, I find out their style and I learn it and I try to get the best outta ’em.
So I’m basically making them feel comfortable in this world, so that they can bring their huge talent of whatever they do, whether it’s action, drama, or comedy. They can do their best work. So, Rebel has this type of personality. I think a lot of that comes out in the style of film, and it’s got a kind of raunchy, irreverent, edgy, tough girl vibe. She’s a funny Australian tough girl, and that comes across in the movie, I think.
When you see Rebel, you don’t quite think “action star,” but Bride Hard really uses that to its advantage. She is fully capable. How is it making sure she was a badass but also playing into that initial shock factor? Because we haven’t seen her do something like this before.
This is what’s exciting about something like this is giving the audience something they haven’t seen with Rebel, and it’s fun for her. It’s fun for me to shoot and to give the audience something fresh.
Obviously, she does fight training and all those things, so I’ve seen her fight before we get on set, but there’s a certain personality that comes into every [scene.] It’s like a dance choreography really. So even though we’ve worked out the fights very carefully, Rebel’s personality will come out, and she is sort of a wild, crazy out-of-control fighter. She’s not the super-precise martial artist type.
Although funnily enough, she is trained in nunchucks, which she told me. So I thought, well, we’ve gotta use that. But we can’t just use nunchucks. We have to make it fit the wedding theme. So that’s when we came up with the idea of the hair tongs that she can use as nunchucks, and then you kind of use those.
What jokes can we get out of that, you know? Then she comes up with funny ad libs to go with that. It just develops out of her personality, really. So the action is just like the comedy scenes that they really are based on Rebel’s personality and how she fights, how she does action, and then how her sense of humor comes out in those action sequences.
The first film you directed was Con Air. Incredible movie. I believe that’s the best out of the Die Hard-inspired action films. We saw that whole wave of those, and obviously Bride Hard from the title is an homage to Die Hard. How was it revisiting that formula after 30 years and putting another fresh spin on it?
It’s a lot of fun. I mean, that’s what it kind of attracted me to it. It’s two of my favorite films, Bridesmaids and Die Hard. They’re both absolute classics, and I’ve watched both of ’em [many times]. I probably watched Bridesmaids way more than Die Hard, actually, because it’s so funny. So, I thought it would be fun to do, and every now and again, you wanna do a film that’s fun to make, not just to watch.
I wanted a theatrical film that was going to work on a big screen, and there are so many films that go straight to streaming and small screens that are brilliantly made. But it’s rare to get a film that is really designed for the big screen where you have to be in a room with 500 people and all laugh at the same time and really you know, switch off your credibility meter and go, “I just want to have a good time and forget about everything.”
That’s what I thought this film would be.
Thanks to Simon West for taking the time to talk about Bride Hard.
Source: Comingsoon.net