Actor Henry Cavill shared a brief update on the upcoming Highlander reboot he will star in that is being helmed by John Wick creator Chad Stahelski.
Henry Cavill via Josh Horowitz YouTube
Cavill provided the update during an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast hosted by Josh Horowitz.
Cavill was asked what he’s excited about exploring with the film and he responded, “I’m going to have to answer that very carefully. I was, am a Highlander fan. They were great fun movies.”
He continued, “Obviously, I’ve watched them when I was a lot younger and since rewatched, but also the TV show. I really enjoyed the lore behind it. That sort of sense of a tragic warrior with more of a story to tell rather than just a cool guy with a sword doing cool things. And this goes even deeper into that.”
Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia in The Witcher (2023), Netflix
When pressed for details on how the reboot might explore more of the old TV show, Cavill said, “I can’t speak to that at the moment, but what they’ve done so far and what we’re doing with the development of the script is extraordinary. I think people are going to be really, really pleased.”
He added, “The same as working with [Argylle director] Matthew [Vaughn], big swings are important. You play it safe, you’re gonna just go, ‘Ah, I guess it was fine.’ But you take a big swing and then people love it or they hate it. And sometimes hating it is just as good.”
Dua Lipa and Henry Cavill in “Argylle,” premiering in theaters February 2, 2024.
While Cavill stayed tight-lipped for the most part on the reboot, director Chad Stahelski has shared a number of details over the last decade. Back in 2017, he told Collider, “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, what’s a great way to tell this story,” he said.
Christopher Lambert as Connor MacLeod in Highlander (1986), 20th Century Fox
Stahelski also detailed how the film would draw inspiration from the Highlander TV series as well as Star Wars, “I think the TV series hit on a lot of great stuff wasn’t in the feature, between the watchers and all the different types of immortals. How do we get this into a feature mode before we dribble it into the TV world? Well, let’s restructure it in parts, let’s look at it like it was a TV show, let’s look at it like it was a high-end trilogy. How do we tell the story of the gathering, the quickenings, the immortals, and how do we really build this world out even more so than the original project?”
“That’s what we’re restructuring right now,” he said. “It’s taking all the good stuff that we had before I was involved in the project from the script; redeveloping the script to give us really good chapters one, two and three; and expanding the world.”
Christopher Lambert as Connor MacLeod in Highlander (1986), 20th Century Fox
As for Star Wars he explained, “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 is 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,” he noted. “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.”
Christopher Lambert as Connor MacLeod in Highlander (1986), 20th Century Fox
Stahelski, famous for his gunplay in the John Wick franchise, also shared how he wants to do something similar with Highlander albeit with swords, “If heads coming apart is an R, great. If heads coming apart is a PG, great. Ratings are second to what we’re going to do. Highlander, I think the action is — at least what’s in my head — is going to fall on a line, for sure.”
He elaborated, “We want to design it what we think is aesthetically cool, and so far I’ve met no resistance, they’re like, ‘Look, whatever you did with John Wick with the gun stuff, we want you to try and do with the sword stuff. We want you to make something cool and something unique, and something that’s going to make audiences say ‘Wow, I haven’t seen that before.’”
Highlander #1 Cover art by Tony Harris (2009), Dynamite Comics
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In a more recent interview with Horowitz, Stahelski also detailed, “We’re looking to do 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 for the The Gathering. So we have room to grow the property.”
“If we got our s**t together and we pulled off the feature, like yeah, we have ideas for days about how to make the coolest characters and to make that an epic TV show. I just think that’s a rich, rich material. When you can pick any period in time, any nationality, any culture, any type of person, and make them an immortal that have to duel and deal with the burden of immortality that’s f***ing cool to me,” he concluded.
He also shared with TheWrap in October 2023, “We’re trying to encapsulate everything you loved about the original with more – meaning we want to ground it, we want it to be a great chance at world-building and mythology. But we still want to keep it fun.”
“It’s like the ‘Wick’ movies,” he said. “You want to experience this world, you want to believe it’s real. But it’s also five degrees off from reality. This is a movie with immortals running around chopping each others’ heads off. There’s a certain ridiculousness to it. It’s like the ‘Wick’s. We ride the tone. Everybody in the movie thinks its real. But we as an audience can get our heads around it – look, suspend disbelief. We’re trying to get you on board for this amazing journey with people who have lived hundreds of years. It’s a challenge. But I’m very excited.”
He also confirmed his upcoming film would feature music from Queen.
Highlander #1 Cover Art by Dave Dorman (2009), Dynamite Comics
What do you make of Cavill’s update on the Highlander film and that it will take a big swing?
