Alan Ritchson is out. Keanu Reeves is in. The John Wick star has been set to lead Maelstrom, Netflix’s long-delayed “Die Hard in a hurricane” thriller, taking over the role the Reacher star had been circling since summer, according to Hollywood trade reports published on Monday, October 26.
Nobody has said why Ritchson left. Neither he nor Netflix has given a reason, and the streamer has not set a release date.
One marshal, one witness, one storm
The setup is a pure pressure cooker. A federal marshal is assigned to protect the fiancée of an arms dealer; she wants witness protection and is about to testify against him. Over a single night a hurricane hits, cutting off phones and radios and stopping any backup from getting through, so the pair must hold off the dealer’s hired guns while the storm tears at the walls.
Jaume Collet-Serra directs. He is the filmmaker behind The Shallows and, more to the point for Netflix, Carry-On, the Christmas airport thriller with Taron Egerton and Jason Bateman. That film premiered on December 13, 2024, and by January 2025 had passed 149.5 million views, which then made it the fifth most-watched English-language film in Netflix history.
A script that sat in a drawer for 33 years
The wildest part of this story is the paperwork. Maelstrom began as a spec script, meaning it was written without a studio commission and then shopped around for sale. Jeff Robinov, then still an agent, sold it to Warner Bros. in 1993 under the “Die Hard in a hurricane” pitch. The reported price was somewhere between $225,000 and $625,000.
Robinov later ran Warner Bros. Pictures, where he oversaw franchises such as The Dark Knight trilogy and The Hangover. He is now producing Maelstrom through his company Talking Pictures, alongside Tabitha Shick, and it is the first title under his new Netflix deal.
The first draft came from the late writer Gregory Fitzpatrick. Mark Bianculli, who wrote How to Rob a Bank, is updating it for modern audiences.
The revival itself follows a pattern. Carry-On had also sat dormant, for 11 years, before Netflix film executive Ori Marmur brought it back. Once that film hit, his team went looking for forgotten high-concept scripts from producers, and it was Kira Cousineau, a development executive, who helped pull Maelstrom back out.
How the casting turned
Laid out in order, the dates show how quickly the lead role changed hands:
- 1993: Warner Bros. buys the spec script.
- December 13, 2024: Carry-On premieres on Netflix and becomes one of its biggest films.
- July 14, 2026: Ritchson is reported to be in talks to lead Maelstrom; his representatives offer no comment and Netflix declines to weigh in.
- October 26, 2026: Reeves is reported as the new lead.
By our count, July 14 to October 26 is 104 days, so Ritchson’s name sat on the project for just under 15 weeks. The script has waited 33 years, from 1993 to 2026, to reach a camera.
Where both stars go next
Reeves, who has spent more than a decade as John Wick, keeps stacking action work. He is in talks for James Wan’s crime thriller The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil and is due back in 2027 voicing Shadow for Sonic the Hedgehog 4.
Ritchson is hardly idle either. He still plays Jack Reacher for Prime Video, already has the Netflix action title War Machine on his record, and co-stars with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Awkwafina in the holiday comedy The Man with the Bag, as a former thief recruited by Santa. That one lands on Prime Video on December 2.
Further reading
Image: Chris Roth, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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