Cliffhanger: Ana Lily Amirpour discusses reinventing the Stallone classic

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

It's been over a year since it was announced that A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night / The Bad Batch director Ana Lily Amirpour had signed on to direct a reboot of the 1993 Sylvester Stallone action film Cliffhanger (watch it HERE) that would have a female character in the lead. We haven't heard anything more about it since the announcement. Sometimes it's a bad sign when things get that quiet, so when Amirpour made an appearance on The Kingcast podcast to discuss her appreciation of Pet Sematary she was asked if her "gender-swapped, female-led remake of Cliffhanger" was still happening. She replied, 

I wouldn't describe the Cliffhanger reinvention that I'm gonna make in that way. I'm taking Cliffhanger and putting it in my laboratory. I love action/survival movies, I love all climbing movies, I love all survival movies, and I had this idea… So I would say, I'm not doing a remake, I never thought of myself as someone who is into that type of approach, but I would say it's a reinvention that definitely has the DNA of things that made Cliffhanger Cliffhanger. And yeah, there does happen to be a female that has a very important part."

Amirpour is doing something so different with this take on the concept that she thinks of her Cliffhanger as its own thing. It's not the sort of remake that is directly based on the script of the original film.

The Kingcast co-host Scott Wampler wanted to make sure there was a juicy villain role like the one John Lithgow played in the original film. Amirpour assured, 

Any movie is only as good as however bad your bad guy is. Yeah, absolutely. There's a really fun group of characters, and it's a fun story that I want to do up a mountain. You can't replace Sly, you know what I mean? I think the original is like this gangster, iconic B-movie, but it's definitely not a perfect movie, and it has fun elements that you can take and go out in a whole different direction and do things in a different way. I would argue that Pet Sematary is an untouchable masterwork of a film. What are you going to do? Why are you remaking it? It's like remaking Back to the Future. And maybe that's how people feel about Cliffhanger and so I'm f*cked, as far as those people go. But whoever is ready for a ride, those people can go on the ride. And maybe the grumpy ones can go on the ride too and at the end they'll be like, 'Okay, yeah. It was fun.'"

Directed by Renny Harlin, the original Cliffhanger has the following synopsis:

 For Rocky Mountain Rescue, the mission is almost routine: locate five climbers. With the woman he loves and his best friend, Gabe Walker braves the icy peaks only to discover that the distress call is really a trap set by merciless international terrorist Eric Qualen. Now millions of dollars and their own lives hang in the balance. Against explosive firepower, bitter cold, and dizzying heights, Walker must outwit Qualen in a deadly game of hide-and-seek.

Sascha Penn is writing Amirpour's Cliffhanger. Neal Moritz and Toby Jaffe are producing through their company Original Film, along with Thorsten Schumacher and Lars Sylvest of Rocket Science. Rocket Science is also funding the project.

Jason Momoa is expected to have a "key cameo" in the film.