There can be only three as possible new Highlander trilogy gears up

Last Updated on July 21, 2021

Wow, more and more every day it seems as if JOHN WICK is the film that is impressing more and more executives all across Hollywood. Thank God the flick boasted two directors, eh? I don't know how one man could keep up with the workload. If you don't know, JOHN WICK was co-directed by Chad Stahelski and David Leitch. While Leitch moved on to THE COLDEST CITY and the sarcastic superhero sequel DEADPOOL 2, Stahelski returned to take the solo reins for JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2, and is now attached to direct the new HIGHLANDER reboot (or whatever they are calling remakes now-a-days). 

He recently sat down with Collider to talk about his version of HIGHLANDER, and here is what he had to say about where the story is in general and where they would like to see it go:

"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, whats a great way to tell this story?"

He then went on to speak about the idea of making the new reboot a possible trilogy:

"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 to 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. 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.

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 us 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. 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."

He also spoke on the issue of whether or not the new film(s) will be R-rated:

"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. 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.'"

It sounds to me like Stahelski has lofty goals and a clear idea of where he wants the new film series to head, which is all good. If he can pull off half the quality he displayed in JOHN WICK (and hopefully JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2) I think, no matter what happens, the new HIGHLANDER is in good hands.

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