Alan Ritchson’s Next Action Movie Could Finally Bring A 33-Year-Old Script To Life
Alan Ritchson has spent the last few years cementing himself as one of streaming’s most bankable action leads, and his next move looks like it could raise the stakes even further. Between his breakout turn as Jack Reacher and his more recent work in ‘War Machine,’ the actor has built a reputation for physical, high-intensity roles that keep audiences coming back. Now buzz is building around a brand new project that ties his rising star power to one of Hollywood’s stranger development stories.
The film in question is ‘Maelstrom,’ and its road to the screen has been anything but ordinary. The spec script was originally sold to Warner Bros. all the way back in 1993 by producer Jeff Robinov, who was working as an agent at the time. That means the project has been sitting in some form of limbo for more than three decades before finally finding new life.
According to Variety’s exclusive report, Ritchson is now in negotiations to topline the film, with Jaume Collet-Serra attached to direct. Collet-Serra is fresh off directing Netflix’s ‘Carry-On,’ and that connection is not a coincidence. Carry-On spent eleven years dormant before Netflix’s Ori Marmur revived it and attached major talent, and the film went on to become the third most viewed movie in the platform’s history.
That success apparently opened the door for other buried scripts to get a second chance. Marmur and his team reportedly asked top producers to bring forward their best unmade projects with strong high-concept hooks, and Maelstrom was reanimated alongside Netflix development executive Kira Cousineau. It is a rare case of a decades-old spec finding relevance again simply because a different film proved the appetite still exists for this kind of genre thriller.
As for the story itself, Maelstrom follows a Federal Marshal tasked with guarding the fiancée of an arms dealer who is entering witness protection. The action unfolds over a single night as a hurricane moves in, cutting off outside communication and preventing any reinforcements from reaching them. Trapped together, the pair are forced to fight off the arms dealer’s men while also surviving the escalating danger of the storm itself.
The script has also been getting a modern update before cameras roll. Screenwriter Mark Bianculli, known for How to Rob a Bank, was brought on to refresh the material and modernize its characters, working from an original draft by the late Gregory Fitzpatrick. On the producing side, Robinov is expected to produce Maelstrom alongside Tabitha Shick and Talking Pictures as part of his overall deal with Netflix, following his tenure at Warner Bros. where he helped shepherd franchises including The Dark Knight trilogy.
Nothing is finalized just yet, and both sides are staying tight lipped for now. Representatives for Ritchson and Collet-Serra had no immediate comment, and a Netflix representative declined to comment on the negotiations. Still, the pairing of a red hot action star, a director with a proven Netflix hit already under his belt, and a script with this much history behind it makes for an intriguing combination.
If this deal closes, ‘Maelstrom’ would mark another example of Netflix mining its own back catalog of near misses for the next big original hit, much like it did with ‘Carry-On.’ Given how quickly this news is spreading, it is worth asking what fans actually want to see from Ritchson stepping into a Federal Marshal role trapped between armed mercenaries and a raging hurricane. Would you tune in to watch Ritchson battle both bullets and a storm in one long, brutal night?
