Between the releases of the first and second films in the JOHN WICK franchise, director Chad Stahelski signed on to take the helm of a remake of the 1986 action classic HIGHLANDER (which can be seen on Amazon Prime). The project hasn't made much visible progress since then, and we haven't even heard anything about it since the end of 2018, but it's not too surprising that Stahelski hasn't gotten HIGHLANDER into production yet, because this remake has been in development hell since 2008.
Justin Lin, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, and Cedric Nicolas-Troyan have all been attached to direct the film over the years, drafts of the screenplay have been written by Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, Melissa Rosenberg, and Ryan Condal, and for a while Ryan Reynolds was set to star in the film. We also heard the producers wanted Tom Cruise to star at one point, with the likes of Dave Bautista and Vinnie Jones on the wish list to play the villain, The Kurgan.
Those iterations of the remake didn't get anywhere, but four years after Stahelski joined the project it's clear that he intends to see this through. In a new interview with Discussing Film, the director said,
We’re in heavy development mode on Highlander. Tweaking the scripts, writing, conceptualizing sequences, how we’re going to do everything. We probably have a lot more in-person kind of things, but it hasn’t slowed down our development process at all."
One reason why Stahelski's HIGHLANDER hasn't gone into production yet is because he's not just developing a remake, he has also been plotting out a way to revive the HIGHLANDER property with a new trilogy of films. Speaking with Collider a few years ago, he said they were
taking all the good stuff that we had before I was involved in the project from the script; redeveloping the script to give us really good chapters one, two and three; and expanding the world. The vision we’re trying to get across and what we’re trying to develop, I equate very close to Star Wars. The first one us a very satisfying ending but it does leave the door open and that’s kind of how I see this. I would really like to expand it over three. I see the gathering happening over three. It’s tricky don’t get me wrong, that’s why we’re still developing it. We want to be able to tell three complete stories that all kind of fit. I think the Star Wars trilogy, at least up to The Empire Strikes Back, is a good example of how we want to process it."
That sounds promising, but before he can dive into the world of HIGHLANDER Stahelski still has at least one more JOHN WICK movie to make. He's hoping to get JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4 into theatres on May 27, 2022.