The longer any project spends in development hell, the less and less likely the chances of it actually happening become, with the Highlander reboot currently celebrating its 15th anniversary of going nowhere fast.
John Wick maestro Chad Stahelski and exiled Superman star Henry Cavill have been the names attached for the last couple of years, but there are literally dozens of writers, actors, producers, and directors who’ve all been officially attached to reinvigorating the stagnant fantasy franchise at one point or another.
Fortunately, Stahelski was cornered by Josh Horowitz on the latest edition of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, and he offered the first update on Highlander in a long time, which made a refreshing change from his recent practice of ignoring it entirely.
“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. 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.”
As has always tended to be the case when it comes to Highlander, we’ll believe it’s actually happening when it lands on the big screen to provide irrefutable evidence that it genuinely exists. Until then, grains of salt should continue being thrown around given that we’re 15 years into the process with nothing to show for it.