The only time Clint Eastwood officially confirmed a sixth ‘Dirty Harry’: “To satisfy the many requests”
If Clint Eastwood wanted to, he could have played ‘Dirty’ Harry Callahan at least ten times, if not more. From almost the second the five-film series ended with 1988’s The Dead Pool, he’d spend the next two decades constantly being asked the question.
Unforgiven showed that he could still do the whole ‘gruff and grizzled badass’ thing in his sleep, and it was only inevitable that interest would be raised in the ongoing adventures of the iconic antihero when the actor and filmmaker claimed his first pair of Academy Awards and put himself back on top.
That was his fond farewell to the western, and Eastwood had no intention of returning to his other, equally iconic well. He kept reiterating that he was simply too long in the tooth to wield Harry’s signature .44 Magnum in a movie without looking ridiculous, although Gran Torino did make for a decent substitute.
And yet, people kept asking. Whenever he hit the press trail for his latest release, Dirty Harry constantly loomed in the background. Eastwood kept saying that it wasn’t going to happen until he suddenly reversed course and confirmed that he would, in fact, be playing the role again for the sixth time, albeit with a twist.
In the early 2000s, it was revealed that a Dirty Harry video game was in the works, with a story that would fit seamlessly into canon by unfolding between the opening instalment and its first follow-up, Magnum Force. This was a time when Reservoir Dogs and Scarface were being brought to consoles, and nobody batted an eyelid because they assumed it would be another tie-in without any official connections.
However, in May 2005, a bombshell dropped: not only had Eastwood licensed his likeness to be used in the game, but he was also producing it through his Malpaso company, and would return to voice the title character, an announcement that caught everybody off guard, given how against it he’d always been.
“This will be an opportunity to satisfy the many requests over the years to continue the Dirty Harry legacy, only now in the video game medium,” he shared in a statement. “Creating Dirty Harry video games will also introduce this memorable film character to new generations on a medium they appreciate.”
Just like that, the unthinkable had become thinkable; nobody was really asking for a Dirty Harry video game, but a Dirty Harry video game where the main character has Eastwood’s face and was voiced by the man himself? That’s an entirely different matter. Unfortunately, that was about as far as it went.
By 2007, the project had been cancelled altogether, robbing Eastwood of the opportunity to, as he put it, “Get to be me as a young man again, revisit my youth.” It was the only time a sixth Dirty Harry was confirmed, and nobody ever got to see it.
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