A closer look
Bruce Willis was featured extremely prominently in the movie but was intentionally left off the initial promotional posters for Die Hard because studio executives feared his reputation as a television comedy actor would ruin a serious action film. At the time, Willis was only known for the romantic comedy series Moonlighting, and audiences literally laughed out loud when his face appeared in early theatrical trailers. The studio panicked and redesigned the posters to exclusively feature the Nakatomi Plaza building instead. Of course, the movie essentially invented the modern everyman action hero, meaning a bunch of highly paid marketing experts successfully hid the face of the guy who was about to completely redefine the entire Hollywood blockbuster formula for the next three decades!
