‘Highlander’ By Chad Stahelski.
Stunt master and director Chad Stahelski (John Wick) had announced a “Highlander” reboot in May 2021, which he will direct. Henry Cavill (Superman) is attached to star in the lead. The action-fantasy film is set up at Lionsgate. Ryan Condal (House of The Dragon) is among the six writers who have worked on this long gestating script since 2021. Summit Entertainment will produce the pic.
As of now no other casting have been announced. Henry Cavill and Stahelski were attached to the project before the Hollywood strikes occurred.
Premise: An immortal Scottish swordsman faces off with other immortal warriors in order to obtain a coveted ability: Mortality. The new movie will be based on the 1986 original, which starred Christopher Lambert, Sean Connery and Clancy Brown as immortal beings, hunting down one another and collecting more power.
The time-jumping original — with it’s “There can be only one” tagline — spawned four sequels and three TV series. “Queen” memorably provided the soundtrack for the original movie.
The reported budget for “Highlander” is north of $100 million. Stahelski himself has previously talked about it as akin to John Wick with swords. the current draft of the screenplay is by Mike Finch (John Wick 4). Previously, Kerry Williamson, Art Marcum, Matt Holloway, Melissa Rosenberg and Ryan Condal took part in writing a draft. The late Peter S. Davis, producer of the original ‘Highlander’, initiated development of the new film. Summit first acquired remake rights to the original in 2008.
The shooting for ‘Highlander’ was set to commence in January 2025 in Scotland, but recent developments with “Ballerina” (John Wick spinoff) where Chad Stahelski was brought in to reshoot most of the movie, delayed ‘Highlander’ production to 3-4 months.
“Ballerina” which stars Ana De Armas as an assassin in the John Wick universe, had a troubled production. The film was delayed from its release date of June 7, 2024 to June 6 2025. John Wick architect Stahelski then agreed with Lionsgate to oversee production on the film, supposedly shadowing “Ballerina” director Len Wiseman on “additional action sequences”. But things were far worse than Stahelski imagined.
The first cut of “Ballerina”, which was described as a mess, “didn’t pass the muster” with Lionsgate and most of the film had to be reshot by Stahelski, entirely from scratch. It was reported that David Castaneda and Sharon Duncan-Brewster had been added to the cast, Yes, they added new characters during reshoots. According to one insider, a “significant portion” of ‘Ballerina’ was reshot in Prague, which took two-to-three months, with Wiseman not present.
The reshoots with “Ballerina” further delayed development on “Highlander”, which eventually led to Henry Cavill signing up for the lead role in Amazon MGM’s “Voltron” movie. the announcement came last week.
Under his expanded partnership with Lionsgate, Stahelski will have creative oversight of “Highlander” and “John Wick” across film, TV and all multimedia platforms.
“It’s another opportunity to do a property that I love”, Stahelski tells Collider. “I love what Its about, I love working with immortality and love stories through time. I think it’s a good way to take a great period piece, and sci-fi, and mix them together.”
Stahelski, 56, started off his career as a stuntman, first achieving prominence as a stunt performer and coordinator, and Keanu Reeves’ double, in 1999’s “The Matrix”. since then he has directed all four John Wick films, which have been a goldmine for Lionsgate, taking in more than $1 billion. his filmography has been only composed of John Wick universe. “Highlander” will be his first directing gig away from that franchise. He previously talked about the new “Highlander” as the first in a trilogy but we’ve not had word whether that’s still the case.
