Paramount Options "Die Hard On An Alien Ship"

Paramount has bought the script to a sci-fi action flick from John Heffernan, the guy who penned the Oscar-winning Snakes on a Plane.  It’s being produced by Mary Parent, Cale Boyter, and Brian Spink.  Nothing about this seemed out of the ordinary until I spotted this:

[The script is] described as “Die Hard” on an alien spaceship [Variety]

*record scratch* Die Hard on an alien spaceship?  That’s the most original idea ever!  Wait, no, it’s one of the biggest movie pitch cliches in recent history:

An old story says that the pitches for many action films basically go “Die Hard on a . . .”, until one day, someone tried to pitch a movie as “Die Hard in an Office Building”.  Apparently, they were unaware that the original Die Hard did take place in an office building. [TV Tropes]

The anecdote is apocryphal, and yet so plausible.  All these years later (Die Hard was a hit 23 years ago), studios are still buying scripts based on the pitch “Die Hard on a ___”.  That said, I’m watching the hell out of Die Hard On A Spaceship And Also There Are Snakes when it comes out.