Jeremy Irons is set to join Man of Steel star Henry Cavill in Chad Stahelski's Highlander reboot.
Irons, whose numerous film and TV roles include Alfred in Batman V Superman and Ozymandias in HBO's Watchmen, will play the movie’s secondary antagonist, who is described as "the leader of a secret order called The Watchers, who are keeping an eye on the immortals and see them as a threat to humanity.
If you watched Highlander: The Series, you'll likely be aware that The Watchers were an order of humans who made it their mission to record the lives and activities of immortals.
Joining Cavill and Irons will be Dave Bautista (Guardians of the Galaxy, Dune, Blade Runner 2049) as The Kurgan, who was memorably brought to life by Clancy Brown in the '80s movie. Russell Crowe is also on board as MacLeod's mentor and fellow immortal warrior, Ramirez, who was played by Sean Connery in the 1986 original.
Industry actress Marisa Abela will play the female lead, with Karen Gillan as Connor's wife Heather, and Djimon Hounsou as an "immortal African warrior." More recently, we learned that WWE Superstar Drew McIntyre is also on board as Connor's brother.
Stahelski recently revealed some changes to the original movie's timeline.
“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,” he said. “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.“
Michael Finch penned the script for the remake, with Scott Stuber and Nick Nesbitt on board as producers alongside Neal H. Moritz, Stahelski’s 87Eleven Entertainment, Josh Davis of Davis Panzer Productions, and Louise Rosner.
Plot details are still under wraps, but it sounds like this is going to be a fairly direct remake. At the very least, we expect it to stick to the basic premise of the original: A race of immortals do battle across time with the ultimate goal of emerging as the sole survivor (decapitation gets the job done) and claiming the prize of mortality. In the end, there can be only one.
The project was initially set up at Lionsgate, but jumped ship to Amazon MGM Studios’ United Artists earlier this year. Production recently hit a setback when Cavill suffered a training injury.
When the mystical Russell Nash (Christopher Lambert) kills a man in a sword fight in a New York City parking lot, he leaves a sliver of an ancient weapon lodged in a car in the process. After brilliant forensics specialist Brenda Wyatt (Roxanne Hart) recovers evidence of the mysterious weapon, she and her partner, Lt. Frank Moran (Alan North), embark on an investigation Of Nash that will land them in the middle of a dangerous, centuries-old feud between powerful immortals