For as long as I’ve been writing on this site (2011!), there’s been talk of a Highlander reboot and, try as it might, it never came to anything until around 2018.
It was then that John Wick director Chad Stahelski stepped in and Superman himself, Henry Cavill was announced as the lead (Conor MacLeod?), however, it’s been an interesting few years what with the pandemic nonsense and John Wick becoming the biggest thing since sliced bread, so there was little said about it since with Stahelski saying in 2019: “We’re well past the script phase in terms of what we want to accomplish with a feature-length version of what we want and based on there being more after that. We want to tell the complete story of The Quickening, the Immortals, and all that.”
Henry Cavill to star in Highlander reboot from John Wick director
Now he’s talking more about the plans for the movie and how, with the lore of several sequels, an animated series and various books, comics, etc, there’s bigger lore to be drawn from and some of it may be in the new movie from the beginning: “I think we have some very good elements now,” says Stahelski, “The trick is when you have the tagline ‘there can only be one’, you can’t just kill everybody the first time.
“I’ll say it for you first, our story engages a lot of the same characters and stuff like that, but we’ve also brought in elements of all the TV shows, and we’re trying to do a bit of a prequel, a setup to The Gathering, so we have room to grow the property.”
This is very exciting news.
When Russell Mulcahey’s original movie came out in 1986 with Christopher Lambert as MacLeod, the story, while about immortals, seemed grounded on earth, with the story being that among men is a race of immortals who battle through time to win ‘the prize’, a gift of untold power granted to the last man (or woman) standing.
However, by the time we got to Highlander II, it was revealed that the immortals were not from here at all but were a race of aliens… it all went from there, to be honest and, while a lot of it didn’t make sense, there was a lot of fun mythology in there and once you’re dealing with people who cannot die, you can set your story in the past, present or future and really go crazy… and the franchise did.
So, having all that in the new movie right away, will allow for some great stuff right from the get-go… aliens, immortals, it’s basically a free for all. And in the hands of the man who brought us John Wick? Well…
Now word on when the movie will film, let alone come out, but as soon as I know more, you’ll know more too.
Thoughts? I know you have them! Voice-off in the usual ways on FTN’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram
Check out the full interview with Chad Stahelski below:
Marc
Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….
Nerd Comments