Hickman came up with the idea of the millionaire being a drug lord who is using Kersey to eliminate his competition. According to Hickman, he also understood that Cannon producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus "wanted a mindless movie with nonstop action", so he came up with "cartoonish" action scenes. Hickman revised his screenplay from February to March 1987, during which time he wrote from 9a.m. to 9p.m. on a daily basis. Hickman toyed with the idea of giving Kersey a surrogate son called Eric, to avoid repetition in having the character lose another daughter. He changed his mind and turned Eric into Erica, because he felt that the death of a girl would be a stronger echo to the original loss in Kersey's life. Hickman was also the father of a daughter and could better understand the agony of losing a girl. During filming, Bronson requested further rewrites of certain elements of dialogue and action scenes. Hickman recalled going through several rewrites on a daily basis. An earlier draft had Paul living in Los Angeles with a new girlfriend. She was subsequently murdered by crooks. Paul, fighting the urge to return to his vigilante ways, captures the crooks and hands them over to the police, but when the crooks walk on a technicality, Paul becomes the vigilante once more, and hunts them down. One by one. Cannon felt this take on the series was too cerebral and didn't feature enough action. Ultimately, a more conventional storyline was chosen. Casting For Death Wish 4, Cannon reached an agreement with an independent producer, Pancho Kohner, son of Paul Kohner. The senior Kohner was the agent of Charles Bronson. Pancho himself had produced (or co-produced) seven previous Bronson films, including St. Ives (1976), The White Buffalo (1977), Love and Bullets (1979), 10 to Midnight (1983), The Evil That Men Do (1984), Murphy's Law (1986), and Assassination (1987). Death Wish 4 was the first film in the series not to be directed by Michael Winner, who was occupied filming Appointment with Death (1988). Even so, Winner expressed no interest in directing Death Wish 4 because Bronson was displeased with their previous collaboration on Death Wish 3. Both Bronson and Kohner had in mind assigning directorial duties to J. Lee Thompson, who had worked with them in several previous films, and had also had a good working relationship with the producers of Cannon Films.