Did you know they're making another Cliffhanger movie? Sylvester Stallone starred in and co-wrote the screenplay for the 1993 movie directed by Renny Harlin. New reports say Ana Lily Amirpour will be directing the reboot/remake, with Aquaman himself Jason Momoa in talks for a key cameo and the lead played by an actress they are now casting.
We've been talking about a Cliffhanger sequel for over a decade, and a remake for at least five years. Apparently there was a long tug-of-war to get the rights from StudioCanal, and now Fast and The Furious franchise producer Neal Moritz will produce, with the first draft of a new script by Sascha Penn (Creed II) expected in a few weeks.
That's the word from Deadline, and it sounds like Sylvester Stallone is excited about the new film and wishes the team well:
Hang in there, he says! Since he was already talking about Cliffhanger, Sylvester Stallone dug up some old photos and shared a little bit more about how that sausage was made:
It doesn't sound like it was the easiest film to make, and there were some struggles in post-production too. Back in 2006, Sylvester Stallone answered a fan's question on whether there were plans for a director's cut release of the film, since the theatrical and DVD versions were supposedly "very cut." Here's Sly's response, via Ain't It Cool News:
No, actually the director’s cut was met with a lot of disapproval at the screening and received some alarmingly low scores. Mainly because the stunts were absurdly overblown. For example, the average man can jump maybe twelve feet across a gorge, and the stunts had me leaping maybe three hundred feet or more, so situations like that had to be pared down and still then were fairly extreme… so you’re probably better off with this cut. By the way, the 2nd unit crew that filmed the majority of the action was extraordinary.
No offense, Renny Harlin? The 1993 Cliffhanger made $255,000,211 worldwide off a reported production budget of $70 million, per Box Office Mojo. Not too shabby.
According to the Guinness World Records, Cliffhanger had stuntman Simon Crane perform the most expensive film stunt in air. It was performed just once, and his trick of moving between two jets at an altitude of 15,000 feet cost $1 million. Sylvester Stallone is said to have offered to reduce his salary by $1 million to make sure the stunt happened.
Sylvester Stallone is pretty good about sharing behind-the-scenes details. He just noted that he would be going to the Cannes Film Festival for a career retrospective and to show portions of Rambo V: Last Blood, which opens in theaters on September 20.
Sly had previously mentioned that Rambo 5, unlike some past films, was going "beautifully" in the editing process. He also recently plugged the upcoming 40 Years Of Rocky documentary, which he narrates himself. It was also just announced that Stallone's Escape Plan: The Extractors -- co-starring Dave Bautista and Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson -- will be released on Digital, Blu-ray, and DVD on July 2.
And we're still waiting on more updates for The Expendables 4, which will hopefully bring back the whole gang. If Sylvester Stallone is into the idea for this Cliffhanger remake, maybe he'd even be up for a cameo? We'll have to see how this plays out as the new movie moves forward. Keep up with everything that already has a 2019 date attached with our handy movie schedule.
