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The “Highlander” remake is moving from Lionsgate to Amazon. Deadline reports that Amazon MGM Studio’s United Artists is in final negotiations to acquire the rights to the remake of the 1986 classic.
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Henry Cavill is attached to star in the “Highlander” remake and Chad Stahelski of “John Wick” fame is directing. Michael Finch is writing the screenplay.
Netflix
In the 1986 film, Christopher Lambert plays Connor MacLeod, a 16th century Scottish clansmen who finds out he’s immortal after he’s run through by a sword big enough to have its own anime title.
After his resurrection, MacLeod is thrown out of his home for suspected witchcraft, but he is soon recruited by Ramirez (Sean Connery) who tells him just about everything he needs to know about being an Immortal. The only way he can die is if he loses his head, he can’t have children, and one day he will be inexplicably drawn to The Gathering where the remaining Immortals will duel to the death. The remaining Immortal will win the Prize and be able to reshape the world with it for better or worse.
For a franchise known for the phrase “there can be only one,” “Highlander” has sure had a whole lot more than one. Four live-action films were spawned as well as the animated film “Highlander: Search for Vengeance.” On television side of things there was “Highlander: The Series”, “Highlander: The Raven”, and “Highlander: The Animated Series”.
Say what you will about there being too many reboots and/or remakes, “Highlander” is an example of a film that would almost certainly benefit more from a do-over than a continuation of the original.
Part of what makes the franchise a challenging one is that the original film had a definitive ending which follow ups and spinoffs have constantly rewritten in order to justify continuing. For example, “Highlander II: The Quickening” reimagined the Immortals as aliens. It was so poorly received that the sequel has been universally ignored by all the media that followed. This began to be a cumulative kind of ignoring; i.e., every film that followed would both rewrite the end of the original film and ignore the films in between to the point where it’s difficult to truly call them a series.
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