Since 2016, “John Wick” filmmaker Chad Stahelski has been attached to a reboot of the “Highlander” franchise at Lionsgate. The project got a boost in 2021 when Superman and The Witcher actor Henry Cavill was in talks to star.
The original 1986 film followed Christopher Lambert as swordsman Connor MacLeod, one of a number of immortal warriors who can be killed only by beheading.
After initial training by immortal swordsman Ramirez (Sean Connery), MacLeod lives on for several centuries, eventually settling in New York City and taking on his greatest enemy the Kurgan (Clancy Brown). The film spawned multiple sequels and TV series, developing a large mythology in the process.
That mythology is daunting according to Stahelski out this week promoting “John Wick: Chapter 4”. With the ‘Wick’ franchise taking a rest, Stahelski is looking to other projects such as his “Ghost of Tsushima” adaptation and “Highlander”. The issue with the latter is it takes time to get it right as he tells Deadline:
“I’ve worked on Highlander for years now, for Henry Cavill. Being retroactive is hard. What’s different between Wick and that? With Wick, you weren’t serving seven seasons of TV plus two spinoffs plus five films.
If I were to do a remake of Highlander right now, you’d expect a lot of mythology in those first two hours; you couldn’t explore stuff without it. Now, Highlander as a TV show now would be amazing. You’d have time to build it out, see all those flashbacks and the potential of it.
It’s trickier when you’re trying to do something with that big of a mythology. But I agree, that would be one to take a really big stab at. Here, we just had the opportunity to really learn as we went on with Wick.”
With Cavill having exited “The Witcher” ahead of its fourth season of production, a lot will depend upon his scheduling in terms of getting the film done.
