Keanu Reeves Replaces Alan Ritchson in Maelstrom, Netflix's Die Hard in a Hurricane

Photo: Mike Trenchard, Earth Sciences & Image Analysis Laboratory, NASA, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Keanu Reeves is now the lead in Maelstrom, the Netflix action film from Carry-On director Jaume Collet-Serra, and he is stepping into a role that Alan Ritchson was supposed to play. Ritchson's exit was reported within the same day and nobody has given a reason. Netflix had been expecting him back after War Machine did big numbers for them, and a sequel to that is still in development, so this is not a falling out with the streamer as far as anyone can tell.

The pitch is Die Hard in a hurricane. Reeves plays a federal marshal guarding an arms dealer's fiancee, who is about to go into witness protection before testifying against him. A hurricane cuts communications, nobody can get in to help, and the people who want her dead are already inside. It is a simple, contained setup, and that is exactly the kind of thing Collet-Serra does well.

Photo: Governo do Estado de Sao Paulo, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The part I find most interesting is how old the script is. Warner Bros. bought it as a spec in 1993 for a reported $625,000, which is about $1.4 million in today's money, and it has sat around for three decades. Mark Bianculli is rewriting the original draft by the late Gregory Fitzpatrick. Scripts that survive that long usually have a hook that keeps people coming back to them.

Photo: Red Carpet Report on Mingle Media TV, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Reeves at this age, in a single location, with weather as the villain, feels like a better fit than Ritchson to me. Ritchson is a wall of muscle. Reeves is a man who looks like he might actually lose. Which one would you rather watch in a flooded building?