‘John Wick’ Director on How His Henry Cavill ‘Highlander’ Reboot Will Feel Like a Prequel
www.hollywoodreporter.com
Chad Stahelski gave some hints about his approach to reinventing the 1986 fantasy classic.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/1842280

Talking to the Happy Sad Confused podcast, the John Wick director suggested his approach to the new film in development will be to launch a potential series of films. He says the idea is to not rush the first movie to the original film’s conclusion — which crowned MacLeod the sole survivor of a group of dueling immortals following their climactic Gathering.

“I think we have some very good elements now,” he said. “The trick is when you have the tagline, ‘There can only be one,’ you can’t just kill everybody the first time.”

Stahelski also said the film will incorporate elements of the 1992 syndicated Highlander TV series, which ran for six seasons.

“Our story engages a lot of the same characters, but we’ve also brought in elements of all the TV shows,” Stahelski said. “We’re trying to do a bit of a prequel — a setup to The Gathering — so we have room to grow the property.”

He noted he hasn’t thought of John Wick as a franchise (despite that Continental TV show coming) but he does see Highlander as a potential franchise.

“We have ideas for days for the coolest characters [that could make for] an epic TV show,” he said. “I just think that’s rich mythology when you can pick any period of time, any nationality, any culture, any type of person and make them an immortal that have to duel and deal with the burden of immortality — that’s fucking cool.”

  • @PanronEnglish
    3•1 year ago

    I think the series is a product of its time. For all the good and bad that entails. I wasn’t able to watch it at the time it aired, but I somehow got a copy of a catalog filled with show-related merch, and that lived in my imagination for a long time. When I finally watched it a couple years ago, it was… a fairly painful experience. I was only able to get through it by using it as background noise while I played games on a handheld console (Vita, 3DS) or worked. After the first season, it did kind of improve for the next couple seasons, but never enough that I’d consider it anything more than average TV (and even that would be generous for most of it). The last three seasons were bad enough that if I didn’t already have the full series on hand, I simply would’ve dropped it altogether.

    I do appreciate the way the show expanded the mythos, though. Having all those factions, both mortal and immortal, was a good decision.

    I think a full reboot could serve this well, and I’d be excited to see what they can with a decent budget on a streaming platform (for example), without all the constraints of broadcast TV standards and practices.