One of development hell’s longest-tenured residents has finally been making some serious moves to flee at long last, with John Wick director Chad Stahelski and star Henry Cavill’s Highlander reboot gaining genuine traction on its quest to finally make it to the big screen.
While the gloriously demented cheese of the original and unhinged lunacy of The Quickening most definitely won’t be replicated for obvious reasons, the filmmaker has at least confirmed to The Wrap that he’s planning on dipping into the back catalogue of iconography to bring back Queen’s classic soundtrack.
“Yes. Probably in a different way than you think, but hardcore yes.”
Any reboot of a notable property has to toe a fine line between acknowledging what came before without veering too far into blatant fan-baiting, but having already stated his case on why Highlander deserves a comeback, Stahelski expanded on his thoughts even further.
“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. 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. 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.”
Stahelski is saying all the right things, and we already know the action sequences will be on-point, so throw some Queen into the mix and you can almost feel the excitement levels beginning to rise as Highlander mounts its escape after 17 years of false dawns.
