Director Chad Stahelski's HIGHLANDER Reboot Could End Up Being a TV Series
John Wick: Chapter 3 director Chad Stahelski signed on to direct a reboot of Highlander a couple of years ago. It’s been awhile since we’ve had any update on the project, but we have one for you today and the new details are pretty interesting.
The project is still moving forward and being developed, but right now the creative team is trying to decide how exactly they want to tell this story. It was initially supposed to be developed as a film, but now it looks like they might want to go the TV route.
While talking to Collider, Stahelski explained:
"We’re trying to get it done. Anyone who knows anything about the property knows it has a lot of meat to it. It’s a good property. It’s got a lot of potential. We’re just trying to figure out the best way not to fuck it up. Not to try and fit it into a one hour, 45-minute movie, which, when your pitch is, ‘There can be only one,’ and in your first movie you kill everybody but the one, sequels have a problem of happening. So we’re trying to design in a way that gives us a little more lead in, a little more time with the mythology and see some of the best characters."
He went on to talk about the previous Highlander TV series and how they might go about developing their own Highlander series:
"They did seven seasons of TV, and even though the TV show may not hold up today, the idea of it and the characters they brought in were super cool. So we’re trying to devise a methodology that leads up to The Quickening. You just don’t end with a one-on-one battle in New York, cut off a guy’s head, and that’s it. We want to do this in such a way that it becomes more of a series whether it’s short form or long form that would let us explore that in the best way. I have a huge, heartfelt love and respect for the project, so we’re trying to find the best way to do it to give fans what they want.”
Regardless of how they end up delivering the story, they just want to make sure that they deliver a Highlander story that the fans are going to love. Stahelski also said:
“We’re well past the script phase in terms of what we want to accomplish with a feature-length version of what we want and based on there being more after that. We want to tell the complete story of The Quickening, the Immortals, and all that. But the overall environment is changing so much. Look what Netflix is doing with TV now. As an action designer myself, there are two or three episodes of Game of Thrones that blow away 90 percent of features. Netflix has a whole new delivery system with features on that coming off differently and letting filmmakers and directors expand out without being crushed by opening weekend box office. So there’s a couple different mediums we want to explore and what is the best way to bring this out in.”
I seriously think that a a new Highlander TV series would be the way to go! There’s a lot of story and mythology to play with, and to do that properly and dive deep into the characters, a TV series allows them to do that and give us something awesome!
They could also produce a TV series that leads up to the movie if they want! How would you like to see them handle the Highlander franchise? Would you rather see it as a movie or a long form TV series?
