20 Upcoming Movies That Might Be Surprisingly Good

This year's new Cliffhanger movie was originally intended to be a direct sequel to the classic 1993 Sylvester Stallone-starring action thriller, though in late 2024 it was announced that the film had been reimagined as a franchise reboot, starring Lily James as the new mountaineer protagonist and Pierce Brosnan as her imperiled father.

And easy though it is to scoff at Hollywood once again trying to transform a single hit movie into endlessly exploitable "IP," there are some encouraging elements at play here.

For one, official images from the film show Lily James in absolutely shredded shape for the lead role, and with the script having been penned by a female writer, Melanie Toast (Shut In), there's the hope that it will allow James to serve up a compelling new action heroine.

And finally, the new Cliffhanger is being directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, a steady genre filmmaker with a bevy of solid efforts to his name - namely 2005's House of Wax remake, Orphan, Unknown, Non-Stop, The Shallows, The Commuter, and Carry-On.

There's virtually no chance that this ends up nearly as iconic as the Stallone film, but it can nevertheless be a worthy reworking in its own right.