Earlier this month, it was announced that Sylvester Stallone would be scaling the Italian Alps once again with a follow-up to his 1993 action thriller classic Cliffhanger. Instead of Renny Harlin returning behind the camera, the project has been entrusted to another action thriller regular in Ric Roman Waugh, director of hits like Angel Has Fallen and Greenland. Waugh has big plans for the unexpected sequel, bringing his love of the original film and 80s and 90s action films in general to the table to create something special. With his latest film Kandahar releasing this month, Collider’s Steve Weintraub got the chance to sit down with him and learn everything he could about Stallone’s return to the mountains.
The first thing Waugh wanted to clear up was the status of the film relative to the original. News outlets widely stated that the film was a reboot despite Stallone’s involvement which indicates it should be a straight sequel. “It was a little bit of a dogfight of like, ‘What do you call it?’ And I was like, ‘What you call it is, I don’t wanna make a remake,'” Waugh said. “I’m not interested in remakes. I think that what cable television has done for us is, it’s made us, as an audience, embrace serial storylines even more, where we really get to create storylines that we can carry forward and into multiple chapters.” The blueprint for legacy sequels has already been laid out for Waugh in the form of Top Gun: Maverick which introduced and followed new characters while still deeply involving Tom Cruise’s titular aviator. “Top Gun: Maverick was just a brilliant execution of nostalgia from the original movie, carrying that stuff forward, giving us a new identity. We are gonna be doing a very similar thing with Cliffhanger, but what I think also makes this unique is, this guy named Sylvester Stallone, who’s created some of the most iconic characters of all time, but he’s also been really gracious in passing the torch.”
Cliffhanger saw Stallone play Gabriel Walker, a former mountain climber left distraught after his failure to save his friend Hal’s (Michael Rooker) girlfriend. He’s ultimately called back to the mountains for a very Stallone setup — international thieves are left stranded on the mountain with briefcases full of cash, and they force Gabe and Hal to help them retrieve their stolen goods. Waugh envisions a follow-up that looks similar to the Michael B. Jordan-led Creed, instead with Gabe in place of Rocky as he coaches the next generation of mountain rescuers. Gabe’s own struggles to come to terms with the tragedy of Hal’s girlfriend dying will also be mirrored in his daughter as Waugh explains:
“So, the way that he passed the torch to Michael B. Jordan in Creed, you know, off the Rocky franchise, Stallone’s character will be, of the age he is now – Gabe Walker – he’s got a daughter, he’s got an heir apparent, pseudo son, and they have a mountaineering company, Italian Alps. Tragedy strikes that’s very similar to what happened in the original movie, so that father and daughter have to deal with that and how to overcome tragedy. How do we get through traumatic experiences and fight to move forward? It’s what extreme sports like climbing are all about. And of course, there might be some nefarious bad guys that show up in the Italian Alps, and all hell breaks loose.”
Waugh and Stallone Think a Cliffhanger Sequel Will Thrive With Modern Technology
One of the things that excites Waugh and Stallone the most about approaching a Cliffhanger sequel now is the major upgrade in technology since 2023. Modern films like the aforementioned Maverick push the boundaries of what’s possible with the strategic use of real footage, VFX, and sound design to transport viewers into incredible settings. The potential of capturing the tense soundscape of a treacherous mountain climbing operation is something Waugh wants to experiment with:
“What Sly and I talked about, and he was the first one to bring it up, is the challenges of what was made in 1993 with the technology of then, our technology now, we’re gonna take it to a whole other level. Not only visually what we’re gonna do, but sonically, the sound design that wasn’t there in the early ‘90s. What we can do now with sound design, we’re gonna put you on the edge of that 1000-foot cliff, when your fingernails are hanging on to a ledge the size of a penny, when you hear a boulder fly past your head and go to infinity, and your heart beats reverberating off the rocks. I wanna play with the sound design and the jeopardy the way that so many of the movies now, I feel like, just because VFX is there. And now we’re talking about AI and everything else. It’s just becoming more and more fake, and there’s a lot of room for that. I’m okay watching a movie where a car flies out of a plane at 30,000 feet, lands on its wheels, and keeps going in my movie.”
Waugh wants the focus on authenticity above all else too. “In my movie, that guy dies. I’m about authenticity, but it’s also about trying to do it for real.” Again, in searching for that realism, he turns to the management of the pulse-pounding Top Gun: Maverick and its incredible flight scenes. “So the way that they did Top Gun: Maverick, of using new technology to put cameras inside of cockpits of real fighter jets and going through those canyons for real,” he added. “I wanna do that with Cliffhanger, I wanna make the action real. They did it for real, then we’re gonna take it to another level now.” He even has the perfect site picked out for where the mountain climbing thriller sequel will be filmed. “No, no, the movie takes place in the Dolomites in the Italian Alps, and we will be shooting in the Dolomites and other places in Europe. We’re doing it for real.”
Waugh’s Cliffhanger Sequel Is Still Early in the Writing Process
Considering it was only just announced, don’t expect Waugh and Stallone’s Cliffhanger sequel anytime soon. Between the ongoing WGA strike and Stallone’s busy schedule, it’s tough to slot the film in. The star is recently coming off an appearance in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and will soon premiere his reality show The Family Stallone. On top of that, he also has another season of Tulsa King to look forward to at some point in the future. That said, Waugh said of Stallone’s involvement, “He’s definitely doing it.” He expressed just how committed the actor is to helping develop the project, adding:
“He’s obviously busy as well, so we’ll sort out when we’re going, but he and I spoke about it. He’s very passionate about getting this version of Cliffhanger made. Loves his story. If you think about all the different franchises that he’s had – Cliffhanger is not a franchise, it was a one-off, but I could walk on any street corner and I could just say the word Cliffhanger and somebody’s gonna smile. People know what that title is, so he knows what it means, and I think he’s at that time in his life that he wants to carry these legacies forward and do it in a unique way. So I’m super excited about that making that happen.”
What Will the New Cliffhanger Be Called?
In living off the legacy of the original, Waugh and Stallone face the challenge of what to call their new Cliffhanger. Some films opt to share a title with the original, even if it’s beyond confusing, while others like Maverick opt to attach an extra line to emphasize the film belongs in the same universe but offers a new story. Then there’s Creed which changes the name altogether to fit its new main character but still keeps an element that fans will be able to recognize from the original franchise. Complicating matters is that Cliffhanger lacks the name recognition of Rocky or Top Gun, even if it is remembered fondly among Stallone’s catalog and earned a cool $255 million at the box office.
Waugh isn’t sure what direction they’ll go, but again, Maverick seems like their North Star. “Yeah, I don’t know. I imagine we will have a little bit of a Top Gun: Maverick, or some kind of an offshoot of the Cliffhanger title itself.” He also acknowledged how frustrating similarly titled reboots and sequels can be. “I know what you mean with True Grit and Total Recall, and some of the other things that were made, so I imagine we’ll kind of do some type of offshoot of the title itself.”
Waugh Plans to Make Cliffhanger Fit the Biggest Screens Possible
With such a focus on modern technology and transporting audiences to the canyon cliff faces as Maverick brought them into cockpits, Waugh has his sight set on IMAX possible for the new Cliffhanger. Not only is the plan to shoot for the biggest screen possible, incorporating large format cameras and finishing in full Dolby Atmos, but he also pulled another page out of Maverick’s book by hiring decorated mixer Mark Taylor. “I’m very fortunate to have Mark Taylor as my mixer, who just won the Academy Award for Top Gun: Maverick, did No Time to Die, his body of work is amazing,” Waugh added. “But he’s one of those artists that sits on the mix board and understands how to create 5171 and Dolby Atmos and make every version that’s gonna go into different theaters around the world and give you that theatrical experience like no other. And so you’re right, large format IMAX, Dolby Vision.”
That approach worked like a charm for Maverick which became the ninth-biggest IMAX hit ever and arguably the best way to get the full experience of tearing through the air in a fighter jet. Waugh, for his part, is a fan of Dolby Vision theaters for such cinematic spectacle. “I love Dolby Vision theaters. It’s the first theater I’m always gonna look for and being immersed in a Sonic 3D world, as well, on the side of a cliff, and the wind howling around you. I would have loved to have Kandahar finished that way.” This would all serve to enhance an old-school action film experience that has largely been underserved in theaters in recent years. The Gerard Butler-led Plane was a pleasant surprise, earning a sequel earlier this year, but Waugh hopes that Kandahar and his eventual Cliffhanger sequel bring audiences to theaters for a throwback adult action experience that’ll capture those thrills all over again:
“I think that these are the movies that, I’ve said before, we need to, especially me being a fan of these types of action movies, they used to drive our box office, they used to be the one that we’d figure out which was gonna be number one on the weekend. And we’re kind of the underdogs now, and I think it’s really important that we embrace that and understand it, that we need to get our butts back at the theater so we’re not just seeing the big animated movies, and not the big Marvel, and the big 2, $300 million tentpole movies. But these adult-driven action movies, they could be a dying breed and then end up on streaming, and that would be a crying shame. So I’m hoping people will support Kandahar and Cliffhanger, and the other things that we’ve got coming out, and everybody else’s movies that are in this part of the woods because they’re important, they could be a dying breed, for sure.”
Stay tuned here at Collider for more on Waugh and Stallone’s Cliffhanger project. Kandahar, the director’s latest effort with his Angel Has Fallen and Greenland star Butler, arrives in theaters on May 26.