Movies

Female 'Cliffhanger' Remake Coming From Ana Lily Amirpour

female cliffhanger remake
By Chris Evangelista/

Ana Lily Amirpour, director of The Bad Batch and A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, is heading for the mountains with a female-driven Cliffhanger remake. Inspired by the 1993 Sylvester Stallone action film of the same name, this new Cliffhanger hopes to tap "into the primal side of an action movie."

Here's a remake we can totally get behind: Ana Lily Amirpour's Cliffhanger. Whatever you think of the Sylvester Stallone Cliffhanger, you can't argue that it's an untouchable classic. Sure, it's fun, but let's get real – it's about a guy fighting terrorists while rock climbing. There's room for improvement, that's all I'm saying.

Deadline broke the news about the female-driven Cliffhanger remake, which will come from Fast and Furious producer Neal Moritz. Amirpour is an inspired choice for this task – she's by no means a conventional filmmaker, and will likely bring a unique perspective to the proceedings.

"I instantly knew the elements of the story I wanted to tell," the director said. "There's a special place in my heart for an action-survival movie. I've always been attracted to the theme of mountain climbers who, like filmmakers, have a certain madness to them. I love genre and fantasy and in this type of survival film you're playing with real fear." She also added:

"We are setting out to create a thrill-ride on the mountain which taps into the primal side of an action movie, where you see what a person is capable of doing to survive in the most extreme situations, pushed to the limits. Add to that some high-stakes espionage and a badass female mountain climber as the lead and it becomes a truly epic reinvention of what made the original Cliffhanger movie so fun and so thrilling."

In the original Cliffhanger, Stallone played a master mountain climber haunted by his inability to save the life of a friend. That friend was trapped on a mountain range, and she slipped and fell to her death while Stallone's character was attempting to rescue her. A year later, Stallone is summoned back to the same mountain range to rescue a stranded party. It turns out that said party is a group of terrorists looking for a whole lot of money scattered throughout the mountains. It all makes for a big, silly action movie, and I'm all for a new take on this material.

There's no casting yet for the remake, but Jason Momoa is apparently up for a "key cameo." If this Cliffhanger is following a similar storyline as the original, I'm going to go ahead and assume that Momoa will play he person the main character fails to rescue at the start of the film. Just a hunch.

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