Though Sylvester Stallone hasn’t been doing too hot at the box office lately (his last stand-alone, 2013’s Bullet to the Head, made a pathetic $4,458,201 in its opening weekend and never even came close to recouping its budget), no one can deny that some of his movies rank among the finest and most iconic action flicks of all time. In particular, his rock-climbing thriller Cliffhanger is rightly thought of as an action classic. And though Sly himself may be sliding, Cliffhanger is ready for a new lease on life, with news that the film is getting the reboot treatment.
Deadline reports that Fast and Furious producer Neal Moritz is pushing for a remake of Cliffhanger over at StudioCanal and has in fact already locked in a writer. Joe Gazzam got the gig after making a pitch to Moritz and StudioCanal about his ideas for breathing new life into the action classic. Gazzam doesn’t have any finished films to his name, though his spec script Shadow Run is in development over at Sony.
No domestic distributor has been announced, but it’s expected that Sony, which owns Moritz’s Original Pictures, will snap the remake up for domestic distribution.
Renny Harlin directed the original back in 1993, and is still hard at work in Hollywood (his last movie, The Legend of Hercules, is so far the worst film of 2014, for our money), so it’s possible he could return to helm the Cliffhanger reboot, but getting a new director to take a crack at the action-packed story would be much more interesting.
It goes without saying that Stallone will not be returning as the lead action star. Cliffhanger will almost certainly be used an action vehicle for a young up-and-comer who’s ready for the kind of stardom that Sly had in his prime. Hopefully, the reboot will incorporate many of the same practical stunts that made the original such a thrill-ride, though the inclination to use lots of CGI will probably be hard to avoid.
We’ll keep you posted as more on this project emerges.