For a while now, internet darling Henry Cavill has been teasing a revival of Highlander, the movie (and TV) series where immortals battle each other around the world until one is left standing. "There can be only one," as the saying goes. Cavill will play the lead role Connor MacLeod, played by Christopher Lambert in the original Highlander movie from 1986. The new film will be directed by Chad Stahelski, who directed all of the John Wick movies. That could make for a very fun action flick. “If you think you’ve seen me do sword work before, you haven’t seen anything yet,” Cavill teased toThe Hollywood Reporter a while back.
Originally, Cavill was hopeful that shooting for Highlander would get under way this year, but that eventually got pushed back to early 2025. Now things are getting pushed again, with Redanian Intelligence reporting that filming is getting bumped from January of 2025 to May of 2025, probably because Cavill will be engaged filming a Voltron movie during the early part of the year. The guy is very busy.
Still, pre-production on the new movie is underway, with crew members scouting locations in Scotland, Italy and Hong Kong. Those immortals fight anywhere and everywhere. Unsurprisingly, Stahelski is hoping that this Highlander movie kicks off a series, franchises and cinematic universes being de riguer these days in Hollywood. "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," he said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast.
The Gathering, if you're interested in the minutia of Highlander lore, is an event where the last few immortals alive meet to kill each other, with the one survivor claiming "the prize," which is the collected power of all immortals. Can't we all just get along? Obviously no, or there would be no movie. And it sounds like the Gathering won't happen in the first film if Stahelski has anything to say about it.
Delay or no, the new Highlander movie is scheduled to come out in 2026.
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