Tonight, free soloist Alex Honnold is going to free solo one of the world’s tallest buildings: Taipei 101. Honnold is the dude who free soloed El Capitan in Yosemite National Park in the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. And now I promise to stop using the phrase “free solo.”
Honnold’s latest ambitious — and dangerous — climb will be brought to you live on Netflix. Well, sort of live. Skyscraper Live, Netflix’s first-ever live event outside of the U.S., will have a built-in 10-second live-delay, a person with knowledge of production tells The Hollywood Reporter.
Taipei 101 is named for its 101 floors — it is the tallest building in Taiwan and the 11th tallest in the world standing at 1,667 feet tall. A free fall from that height would take about 10.2 seconds with minimal air resistance, according to a calculation I definitely did not personally do. Honnold will have no safety equipment — no harness, no rope — attached for the climb.
Honnold first set his sites on Taipei 101 over a decade ago, he says. “I’ve hoped to have the opportunity to climb it since then.”
Well, the time has come. On the subject of time, Taipei is 13 hours ahead of the U.S.’ East Coast and 16 hours ahead of L.A. While we’ll be watching Honnold climb on Friday night, he’ll be scaling the building on Saturday morning. Skyscraper Live is set to be a two-hour special.
“Skyscraper Live will kick off 2026 as our latest global must-watch live event,” Brandon Riegg, vice president of nonfiction series and sports at Netflix, said at the time the special was announced. “Watching Alex Honnold free climb Taipei 101 will be an adrenaline-inducing spectacle that you can’t look away from. Everyone will be talking about it as it happens.”
Former ESPN personality Elle Duncan will host the event. On-air panelists will be climber Emily Harrington, NASA engineer-turned-YouTuber Mark Rober (Mark Rober’s CrunchLabs on Netflix!), climbing commentator Pete Woods, and, for some reason, WWE Superstar Seth “Freakin’” Rollins. (OK, so Rollins is there to cross-promote another pretty big Netflix live-event property: Monday Night Raw. Netflix also has WWE’s premium live events outside of the U.S.)
Skyscraper Live is a Plimsoll Productions Limited (part of ITV Studios) production. Al Berman is showrunner; he will executive produce alongside Honnold, Grant Mansfield, James Smith, Alan Eyres, Jonathan Retseck. Joe DeMaio directs. Plimsoll is known for its natural history and adventure documentaries. Honnold has previously worked with Plimsoll Productions on his shows The Devil’s Climb and Arctic Ascent with Alex Honnold.
