The anticipated reboot of Highlander starring Henry Cavill as a sword-wielding immortal warrior has gotten an interesting update. John Wick director Chad Stahelski has been cooking this Highlander movie for nearly a decade, and when Cavill's attachment was announced in 2021 it felt like a match made in heaven. And it still is...whenever we get to see it.
We previously reported that Highlander's 2025 filming start date was delayed. Pre-production on the movie is still underway, but according to Witcher scoop site Redanian Intelligence, cameras are now slated to start rolling later in May 2025. The delays are reportedly because Stahelski was needed for reshoots on the John Wick spinoff Ballerina, while Cavill is filming his live-action Voltron movie. Highlander is slated to be the next project the pair tackle after that. John Wick 4 writer Michael Finch will pen the screenplay.
Now, we've gotten word of another shake-up: Highlander may be changing studios.
Highlander changing studios is "a big win for all parties"
The Highlander franchise has long been produced by Lionsgate. From the original 1986 movie starring Christopher Lambert as Scottish immortal Connor MacCleod and all its sequel films to the television series which ran through the 1990s, Lionsgate has always been attached in some capacity. But that may be changing. Deadline reports that United Artists and Scott Stuber are in final talks to acquire the rights to Highlander with an eye toward developing it into a new series. United Artists is a film company owned by Amazon MGM, which means Highlander will now be an Amazon property.
My first thought upon reading this news was, "Oh no, the new Highlander movie is going to go straight to streaming." But according to both Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter, this is not the case. Both emphasize that United Artists is eyeing a theatrical release for the movie, which is good news so far as I'm concerned. Let Henry Cavill slice and dice 'em on the big screen!
According to Deadline's sources, "Stahelski’s vision for the film fit better into the Amazon model," adding that this move is "a big win for all parties." If that's the case, I'm willing to get behind it.
What is Highlander about?
The original Highlander movies are all about a Scottish swordsman named Connor MacLeod, who discovers that he's an immortal destined to roam the world forever. There's only one way immortals can die: by having their heads chopped off. They're drawn together in deadly duels, because "there can be only one." Each time an immortal kills one of their fellows, they grow in power.
The movies had a huge cult following, but from where I'm sitting Highlander really took off with the 90s television show which starred Adrian Paul as Connor's kinsman Duncan MacLeod. The show ran for six seasons and built a fervent following, even spawning a crossover movie with both Paul and Christopher Lambert sharing the screen.
We don't know many details about Stahelski and Cavill's Highlander. Will he be another MacLeod or someone different? Hopefully we find out more soon, but Stahelski did reveal a few interesting tidbits a while back, such as the fact the story will span around 500 years and feature locations like modern day New York and Hong Kong, as well as the Scottish highlands.
"And we're bringing it forward from the early 1500s in the highlands to the beyond present-day New York and Hong Kong, and seeing how it goes," Stahelski told The Direct. "There's big opportunity for action. There's a chance to play a character that not a lot of people get to play. And it's a bit of a love story, but not how you think. On 'John Wick,' I learned a lot on how to bend the storytelling a little... another kind of myth."
Stahelski also revealed how he convinced Cavill to join the project. "My selling point was, to [Henry Cavill], look, you've got a guy that's been alive for over 500 years. He's the last person in the world that wanted to be in this situation. So you get to cover quite a broad spread of a character arc there. And you get to experience someone that's trained over 500 years and sort of played [with many types of] martial arts..."
Given how passionate Henry Cavill was about his swordwork on The Witcher, I can imagine the idea of playing a character with that sort of millennia-spanning fighting experience appealing to him. He's been hyping up the stunts for Highlander for a while. “If you thought you’d seen me do sword work before, you haven’t seen anything yet,” Cavill said of Highlander last year, adding that he's "a lover of the original [Highlander] movies."
I know I'm excited to see what Stahelski and Cavill come up with for this movie. Hopefully we hear more as it approaches its reported film date in May.
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