The Cliffhanger reboot hasn’t even hit theatres yet, but producers Rocket Science and Thank You Pictures are already planning a sequel. Either they’re feeling very confident and can tell the future or they’ve got a lot of cash they really need to burn. The reboot, currently in post-production, stars Lily James and Pierce Brosnan with Jaume Collet-Serra in the director’s chair. No Sylvester Stallone. At all.
If you don’t remember the 1993 original, Sylvester Stallone hung by a rope (literally and figuratively) as the lead in Renny Harlin’s icy action hit. It made $255 million worldwide and is still remembered for its wild stunts, a brooding Stallone, and John Lithgow as one of the most memorable villains of the ’90s. The opening scene (the one that Ace Ventura mocked) remains one of the most terrifying sequences for anyone with a fear of heights.
This new version swaps Stallone’s Gabe Walker for Brosnan’s Ray Cooper, a seasoned mountaineer running a luxury chalet in the Dolomites. His daughter Sydney (played by James) is still haunted by a climbing accident when she’s forced to face her fears after kidnappers target their family during a billionaire’s weekend getaway. James has already called the process of filming “exhilarating,” which suggests there are at least a few scenes where she’s dangling over some very unsafe terrain.
The Cliffhanger reboot script comes from Ana Lily Amirpour, with the latest draft penned by Melanie Toast. Variety described the movie as a “Father-daughter take on Die Hard,” which is either a compliment or Hollywood running out of elevator pitches. To be fair, Collet-Serra knows his way around tense action sequences. He directed The Shallows, which managed to make one shark and Blake Lively scarier than all of the Jaws sequels.
Of course, the conversation around Cliffhanger always comes back to Stallone. In the early ’90s, he was trying to break away from just being Rocky or Rambo. He was doing Demolition Man, Judge Dredd, and yes, the unforgettable Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. Cliffhanger could have easily ended up as another generic action film from that era, but thanks to strong performances (Michael Rooker also deserves a mention here) and unexpectedly great villains, it became a classic. Without it, we might never have gotten John Lithgow’s perfect villain turn years later in Dexter.
Three decades later, every ’90s hit seems destined for either a reboot or a legacy sequel. Stallone himself even announced in 2023 that he’d return for a Cliffhanger legacy reboot follow-up (something like what Tom Cruise did with Top Gun: Maverick). But by October, that idea was scrapped, and the project morphed into the James-led reboot we’re getting now.
If the first film delivers anywhere close to the raw tension of the 1993 original, maybe we’ll all be fine with Hollywood milking the rope one more time. But it sure does feel early to fire off a sequel already.
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