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Director Chad Stahelski says the new Highlander movie could become a trilogy

Chad Stahelski (John Wick) has signed on to direct the long in development Highlander remake/reboot for Lionsgate. I do like the original movie, but I am also happy to see a new version of it. If nothing else it could help banish the memory of the terrible sequels the first film had.

The original 1986 film was directed by Russell Mulcahy and based on a story by Gregory Widen. It starred Christopher Lambert, Sean Connery, Clancy Brown, and Roxanne Hart. The film showed the climax of an ages-old battle between immortal warriors, depicted through interwoven past and present day story-lines.

The fact Stahelski is behind the camera is promising as John Wick was a great action movie. He recently spoke to Collider about what they have planned for the new film. If you are a fan of Queen’s original soundtrack, well it looks like they are taking that into account as well.

If you go back and watch the original Highlander, whether the quality holds up or not or the filmmaking process holds up, there are things about that movie beneath just the shots and the lighting, there’s a mythology there, for some reason, it hooks us. We love that world. everybody loves the immortal realm. Everybody loves the code — There can be only one. There’s something about it that hooks you, hooks me, hooks all the fanboys about it.

The tone of the first one just hit at that weird music video edge in the 80s that had Queen and for some reason, Queen just fits. I don’t think you can do Highlander and bring about that kind of tone again with the mythological world and take it too seriously. Just as we did with Wick, you can’t kill 80 people over a puppy and take yourself seriously. We got to let the audience know that we’re having fun and that there is a world here.

Point being I can’t see Highlander without Queen, without the Queen center, without having Freddy Mercury, Prince of the Universe, and all this stuff. I can’t picture the movie in my head without it.

At the moment they are working on how everything is going to fit together.

We’re currently doing a bit of work on the overall plot structure. When I came on board, they were trying to reinvent the single Highlander property. We’ve gone since back in and we would like to really expand the world, so we consider the same shortcomings don’t happen again that happened on the original project, meaning you have one great movie and four questionable followups. We want to develop a property that can give us — and again it’s not about marketing, it’s not so much about the financials, it’s about how can we make a more mythological, chapter one, chapter two, whats a great way to tell this story?

The vision we’re trying to get across and what we’re trying to develop, I equate very close to Star Wars. The first one us a very satisfying ending but it does leave the door open and that’s kind of how I see this. I would really like to expand it over three. I see the gathering happening over three. It’s tricky don’t get me wrong, that’s why we’re still developing it. We want to be able to tell three complete stories that all kind of fit. I think the Star Wars trilogy, at least up to The Empire Strikes Back, is a good example of how we want to process it.

At the very least it sounds like they are putting a lot of thought into the new film.

Who would you like to see as the Highlander in the new film?

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2 Comments

  1. Tom Hardy as The Highlander
    Dave Batista as The Kurgan
    Diego Luna as Juan Sanchez Villalobos Ramirez

    • I hadn’t thought of Hardy in the role, but he could be good. I think they should go with somebody unexpected for the Kurgan, but I am not sure who – maybe Tom Hiddleston or Micharl Fassbender or somebody along those lines

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