Steven Seagal’s Under Siege is an action classic. It even received two Academy Award nominations, something that’s almost unfathomable for a film starring Jean-Claude Van Damme’s “best friend.” Since nothing is sacred in Hollywood, there was a reboot in the works, with The Night Comes For Us director Timo Tjahjanto attached to the film – and now further details have spilled out about it.
In 2021, an announcement broke that Tjahjanto and writer Umair Aleem successfully pitched an Under Siege remake that would have gone straight to HBO Max. Well, a lot has changed since then, including Warner Bros. locking away projects in its vault for tax write-off purposes, as well as the studio being put up for sale. The Under Siege reboot didn’t seem to be too much of a priority, so all news about it went cold after the announcement.
Thanks to Tjahjanto’s post on X, there’s a bit more insight into the project. The remake appears to be very much dead, but the filmmaker revealed exactly who he had in mind to take over the role of Casey Ryback from Steven Seagal.
“There’s an amazing draft of Under Siege remake written by [Umair Aleem] that we develop with Aaron Pierre as Casey Ryback in mind,” Tjahjanto wrote. “Good God, I still wish it would happen one day.”
Pierre’s star has been on a meteoric rise as of late. Right now, everybody knows him as John Stewart from Lanterns, while he made quite a statement as Terry Richmond in Netflix’s Rebel Ridge. The latter plays out very much like a Rambo-esque movie, so it’s only natural that people would start to view Pierre as the next big action star in the making.
If anything, Warner Bros. must be kicking itself about failing to greenlight the Under Siege remake with Pierre in the lead when it had the chance to – especially since he’ll be able to command a much higher fee now than a few years ago. Also, it showcases how laughably bad and dreadful the studio’s decisions have been under David Zaslav’s reign. Timo Tjahjanto is one of the greatest action directors in the world right now, with everything he touches turning into gold, and Pierre was well on his way to becoming a major talent, but Warner Bros. said no thanks here.
Yeah, the original Under Siege is great, but this is one of those cases where you have faith in the team behind the remake. It might have been just as good as, if not better, than the 1992 film.
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Under Siege |
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Former Navy SEAL, Casey Ryback, is the only person capable of stopping a group of terrorists led by a rogue former CIA agent who seize the USS Missouri, a U.S. Navy battleship, in an attempt to steal its nuclear arsenal. |
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| Studio: Warner Bros. |
| Running Time: 103 minutes |
| Release Date: October 9, 1992 |
| Cast: Steven Seagal, Tommy Lee Jones, Gary Busey |
| Director: Andrew Davis |
| Writers: J. F. Lawton |
| Genre: Action, Thriller, Sea Adventure |
| Box Office: $156.6 million |
