There can only be one: Henry Cavill says starring in the Highlander reboot from Lionsgate is an “opportunity like no other.” The Superman and Witcher star joins John Wick director Chad Stahelski in the reboot of the 1986 film that starred Christopher Lambert and Clancy Brown as warring immortals, which inspired five more films, two live-action series, and an animated series. Reacting to Friday’s news of his Highlander casting on Instagram, Cavill says taking a swing at the Gregory Widen-created franchise will be an adventure that he — and the audience — “shall never forget.”
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“I’ve been a fan of Highlander since I was lad. From the movies in all of their 80s, Queen slathered glory to the TV show with an actor who looked remarkably like one of my brothers,” Cavill wrote about the ’90s television series that starred Adrian Paul. “Being not shy with swords, and having a director as talented as Chad Stahelski at the helm, this is an opportunity like no other. Deep diving into franchise storytelling with all the tools at our disposal, is going to make this an adventure I (and hopefully all of you) shall never forget.”
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Neal H. Moritz (the Fast and the Furious franchise) and Josh Davis produce with Widen, Amanda Lewis (The Fate of the Furious), and Lionsgate’s Summit Entertainment co-founder Patrick Wachsberger (The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Divergent) as executive producers. Summit Entertainment began developing its Highlander reboot in 2008 with Marvel’s Iron Man writers Art Marcum and Matt Holloway.
By 2009, Summit tapped Moritz’s Fast & Furious franchise director Justin Lin (Tokyo Drift, Fast Five) to helm what the studio called a “re-imagination” of Highlander.
“Summit’s film will expand on the original Highlander‘s core mythology of immortals battling amongst us, hunting each other through the ages by tapping its newly minted creative team to take its re-imagination to new heights,” reads a 2009 press release for the at-the-time Lin-directed Highlander. “Plans call for the re-imagination to spur a new franchise for the studio.”
Lionsgate has not set a release date for the rebooted Highlander.
