And then they came for Cliffhanger. As per The Hollywood Reporter, the latest oldie-that’s-not-that-old being fed into Hollywood’s remake machine is the 1993 Sylvester Stallone vehicle in which he tries to defeat John Lithgow by climbing tall mountains. (And this so soon after news of the Willow TV reboot.) The twist? The revival will be female-led.
Granted, no one has yet been cast, though the production’s already off to a good start, because of this: It will be helmed by Ana Lily Amirpour, the director of the indies A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night and The Bad Batch. Those films are known for blending genre with an arty bent. Girl was an Iran-set vampire movie; The Bad Batch was dystopic. And both were strikingly, hypnotically slow, with long stretches of nothing in between their generously sparsed-out kicks.
So will Ana Lily Amirpour’s Cliffhanger have long stretches of methodical mountain climbing in between shoot-outs and sledding chases and mano-e-mano tussles inside caves? Let’s assume not. But we can assume that one reason it got greenlit was due to the popularity of the Oscar-winning doc Free Solo, which boasted some of the most vertigo-inducing photography in non-fiction film history.
The original Cliffhanger was chiefly notable for its climbing scenes, for Lithgow’s English accent, and for giving director Renny Harlin, then Mr. Geena Davis, the clout to make Cutthroat Island — a pirate movie so ahead of its time that it still remains one of the biggest money-losers in blockbuster history. (He rebounded with Deep Blue Sea.) This also means that, with the Creed series and another Rambo en route, we continue to live in the world that Sylvester Stallone built.
Okay, there is one cast member confirmed: Jason Momoa, who co-starred in Amirpour’s The Bad Batch (alongside Keanu Reeves, Diego Luna, Giovanni Ribisi, and an unrecognizable Jim Carrey), will reportedly be filing a cameo.
(Via THR)
