John Wick director Chad Stahelski's highly anticipated Highlander reboot will be a modern retelling of Connor MacLeod's centuries-old feud with his fellow powerful immortals. For those of you unfamiliar with the premise, Highlander follows them in a fight to the death to absorb each other's powers. In the end, there can be "only one."
The cast will be led by The Witcher star Henry Cavill as Connor, with Dune's Dave Bautista set to take on the role of the villainous Kurgan. In the original movie, the powerful big bad was responsible for untold destruction and chaos by killing, raping, and plundering, and took the heads of many Immortals during his 3000 years of life.
In an interview with Collider (via SFFGazette.com), Bautista hyped up this new take on Highlander, comparing the movie's action scenes to what Stahelski dreamed up in the John Wick franchise.
"I was so blown away by the script because, without saying too much, this is such a great reboot," he teased. "We're still paying tribute and giving a nod to the original, but making it new and fresh and exciting, and also just universe-building. It's just so much bigger than the original. The action is on par with John Wick."
"I'm afraid I'm going to say too much. I don't want to give anything away, but I think people are going to be blown away by this because it's bigger than you imagine, and it's new enough that you won't be seeing the same thing," Bautista continued. "If you saw the original, you're still not going to know what the story is."
So, it sounds like we can expect a fresh approach to this story, news which may not come as a surprise after Stahelski previously teased what could eventually become a Highlander "Cinematic Universe," of sorts.
"I think we have some very good elements now. The trick is when you have the tagline 'there can only be one,' you can’t just kill everybody the first time," he explained. "I’ll say it for you first, 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," the filmmaker concluded.
It was recently reported that production on Highlander has been postponed after Cavill was injured during pre-production while training for the Amazon MGM Studios movie. Now, cameras aren't expected to begin rolling until early next year.
Highlander, which was written by Michael Finch, also stars Russell Crowe, Marisa Abela, Karen Gillan, Djimon Hounsou, and Max Zhang. The movie isn't expected to be released until 2027 or 2028, with the latter looking more likely following Cavill's injury.
Are you excited to see Cavill and Bautista go head-to-head in Highlander?