Lily James and Pierce Brosnan’s Cliffhanger reboot lands in 2027

Here we go again—Cliffhanger is back making headlines, and, as flammable as ever, it’s not because anyone’s actually seen it yet. This Jaume Collet-Serra reboot of the Sylvester Stallone classic has landed itself a shiny new US release date—24 February 2027—with Germany following a couple of months later on 29 April. If you’ve lost track (honestly, wouldn’t blame you), this isn’t even the first studio swap it’s suffered.

Cliffhanger now lands in US cinemas on 24 February 2027—a six-month delay from its scrapped August 2026 slot.

New Homes and Old Problems

The production originally belonged to Row K, but let's just say their finances nosedived somewhere between the summit and base camp. They’d planned to throw the film onto over 3,000 American screens this August, but that date’s long gone. In swoops Neon, who’s staked about $12 million (plus a chunky $20 million for prints and advertising) to rescue the project. In a sort of friendly divorce, Row K will 'stick around in some capacity', but they’re off the front line. Neon is talking a big game—they want this to become their biggest box-office splash to date, which, given the $100 million budget, you’d hope it might be out of obligation if nothing else. For a film that's cost this much and shunted release windows, expectations are starting to feel as steep as the Dolomites themselves.

The Story This Time

This isn’t a beat-for-beat remake of Stallone’s ‘hanging by a thread’ action ride. Instead, we’re headed to the Dolomites with Pierce Brosnan as Ray Cooper—a seasoned climber running a plush chalet alongside his daughter (played by Lily James). One weekend, a billionaire’s son arrives, everything goes sideways, and suddenly, a gang of kidnappers is after them. Cue Lily James as Naomi, haunted by personal tragedy, legging it into the mountains where she’s chased by nature and gunmen alike. Collet-Serra is directing, with the script sweatily patched together by Ana Lily Amirpour, Sasha Penn, Mark Bianculli, and Melanie Toast. It’s a proper reimagining, not just Stallone with a few more greys and one-liners.

Lily James, for her part, hasn’t exactly phoned it in. If early press is to be believed, she picked up a bona fide obsession with mountaineering.

Asked about her experience on set, here’s how James described it in previous interviews:

"Oh my God, I had the time of my life. It was so hard. I did five hours of climbing a day for many weeks. I was on mountains nonstop. I fell completely in love with it. It’s the most mind-body-soul activity. And I’m a [mountain-climbing] addict now. I did all my own climbing [in the film], and I got real strong. I was just pounding press-ups between every take."

James also says she’s 'really proud' of the film, calling it an 'unexpected' twist on the original while still keeping 'all the gripping glory' that made the first one such a cult favourite.

From Cancelled Sequel to Full Reboot

The original Cliffhanger basically rescued Stallone’s career after a run of diabolical comedies. Back in the 90s, there was even a sequel in the works—Cliffhanger 2: The Dam, which would have had Gabe Walker squaring off with terrorists at the Hoover Dam (no joke), but that got marooned in development hell for decades.

More recently, Stallone was supposed to pop back up for this project when it was pitched as a legacy sequel. It all fell apart, though, due to a mixture of locked-in pay guarantees and his commitment to Tulsa King, so he bailed before cameras rolled. That forced a full creative do-over: out with the old Gabe Walker, in with Brosnan’s Ray Cooper, and a hard steer into fresh territory—no Hoover Dam in sight.