A couple years back, we learned that Henry Cavill was going to play the lead character in a new Highlander movie, based on the cheesy ’80s series about immortal warriors killing each other because, as the tagline goes, “there can be only one.”
A lot has happened to Cavill since then. He left The Witcher, he was going to come back as Superman and then he wasn’t, he teased a Warhammer 40k series on Amazon, and he played Sherlock Holmes a couple of times for Netflix. Was the Highlander movie lost amidst the tumult?
According to director Chad Stahelski, who’s best known for directing the John Wick series, the Highlander reboot is still on. Speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Stahelski said they have “some very good elements” in place, but don’t want to do too much too soon. “The trick is when you have the tagline ‘there can only be one,’ you can’t just kill everybody the first time,” he said.
Ah, that sounds like Stahelski is settling in for a franchise. “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.”
The Gathering, incidentally, is when all the remaining immortals meet to fight for “the Prize,” which is bestowed on the last living immortal. Sounds like we’ll get to it in movie five or so?
John Wick director Chad Stahelski wants to revive Highlander, “one of the best worst films ever”
This is a pretty ambitious plan for a franchise based on what is, as Stahelski happily admits, “one of the best worst films ever.”
"There’s not a lot that happens in the second act. It’s mostly about, you know, bitchin’ flashbacks with Sean Connery mugging the camera…You watch the movie, and it has no business being good or cool or interesting, but for whatever reason—the fisheye lenses, weird sword fights, fucked up dialogue, and the Queen soundtrack make it one of the funnest movies you’ll ever watch."
Yeah, that about covers it. The original movie is definitely of its time, but that can be fun:
Can Stahelski and Cavill revive Highlander for modern audiences? The actors and writers strikes will have to end before anything can happen.
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h/t The A.V. Club