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Henry Cavill is no stranger to being part of major genre franchises. He’s played Superman and Geralt of Rivia already, and he’s getting ready to play somebody who is as invincible as Superman and as good with a sword as The Witcher when he becomes the Highlander.
Cavill is set to star in the reboot of Highlander from John Wick franchise director Chad Stahelski. While Cavill’s character may have something in common with characters he has played before, the director says he sold the star on the role by promising he would do more on screen than he, or most other actors, had done before. Stahelski told The Direct…
My selling point was, to [Henry Cavill], look, you’ve got a guy that’s been alive for over 500 years. He’s the last person in the world that wanted to be in this situation. So you get to cover quite a broad spread of a character arc there. And you get to experience someone that’s trained over 500 years and sort of played [with many types of] martial arts…
From the moment it was confirmed that Chad Stahelski was taking on the directing role for Highlander, we knew that action would be a key part of the new film. This description alone is incredibly exciting, as it teases a character who has trained in various fighting styles over the centuries, so we’ll see him use different ones depending on where in the story we’re set. One assumes by the end, he’s even combined these styles into something new.
This opens up some really interesting possibilities when it comes to action sequences. This will certainly mean some extensive training for Cavill. We’ve seen the work that Keanu Reeves has done to train for John Wick, and it looks like Cavill will need to train in multiple martial arts styles and, of course, with a sword, to get ready for Highlander
While details about Highlander, including how closely it will stay to the plot of the original, are largely unknown, it’s clear that Stahelski is planning for a franchise, so it’s possible that we won’t see all of this in the first movie. One of the big reasons that a Highlander reboot makes sense is that the original movie clearly never expected to need sequels, which led to the story having to bend over backwards to justify them. A fresh take won’t be tied down by all the previous baggage.
Multiple Highlander movies could be set over literally centuries as Cavill’s character lives multiple lives, learning, fighting and experiencing multiple historical eras. That would certainly be quite the character arc.
Stahelski says he hopes to begin filming Highlander in the spring of 2025, which means we’ll likely see the movie sometime in 2026.