Sumith Prasad
The filming of Henry Cavill-starrer ‘Highlander’ will start in Scotland, Italy, and Hong Kong in the third quarter of this year. Based on the 1986 movie of the same name, the movie revolves around Connor MacLeod, an immortal from the Highlands of Scotland who has been alive since the 1500s and now lives in plain sight as the head of a charitable foundation in New York. He was killed back in the day but somehow got revived to live a full life with his wife Heather.
As the narrative progresses, MacLeod is approached by Ramirez with the talk of the former’s immortal nature and destiny, only for the Highlander to refuse to abandon Heather until her death by natural causes. After Heather’s demise, without ceasing to miss her, MacLeod looks Ramirez up and learns about their powers, their place as warriors, and their destiny to battle amongst themselves until only one remains. MacLeod has lived many lives over the centuries and counted Ramirez as his companion along the journey, as well as fellow immortal Castegir.
MacLeod and Ramirez’s saga takes a turn when Kurgan is out to claim supremacy. In the past, MacLeod bested Kurgan, buried him under tons of rocks, and told the others he was dead. But now, Kurgan has surfaced again and is out for blood. FBI agent Lara suspects MacLeod when people start turning up dead but he evades her until she witnesses herself that those like him and Kurgan cannot be killed except by one another. MacLeod is eventually found by Castegir, who tries to get him to join forces against Kurgan but Castegir is after power himself, forcing the former to fight him as well.
Chad Stahelski, who helmed all four ‘John Wick’ films, is directing the movie based on a screenplay by Mike Finch, who previously collaborated with the filmmaker for ‘John Wick: Chapter 4.’
Stahelski suggested that the reboot could mark the birth of a franchise. “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. 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,” the director told Josh Horowitz while appearing on the ‘Happy Sad Confused’ podcast.
In January 2024, Cavill revealed that he was about to start sword training for the film. “The training is about to begin in earnest. It’ll be a very long training process, and I’m very excited to get into it. There’s only so much I can tell you at the moment. I want to keep everything under wraps for as long as possible,” he told Collider. The actor played the titular character in Matthew Vaughn’s action thriller ‘Argylle.’ He is also a part of the cast of Guy Ritchie’s ‘The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.’
Russell Mulcahy’s original 1986 film starred Christopher Lambert as Connor MacLeod, Sean Connery as Ramirez, and Clancy Brown as The Kurgan. The movie was followed by five more films, including a Japanese animated one. The ‘Highlander’ franchise includes three television shows and a web series.
A part of the original 1986 film was shot in Scotland. Italy previously hosted the shooting of Netflix’s ‘Ripley‘ and Denis Villeneuve’s ‘Dune: Part Two.’ Hong Kong is featured in FX on Hulu’s ‘The Bear’ and Prime Video’s ‘Expats.’
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