Summit and Lionsgate have been trying to get a Highlander remake off the ground for years now, cycling through a series of attached filmmakers and stars, but the latest incarnation might be the most promising yet. Late last year, the studio scooped up John Wick helmer Chad Stahelski to develop and direct the reboot based on the Queen-fueled 1986 fantasy action flick.

In the original, which has become a bonafide cult classic in the decades since, Christopher Lambert played an immortal swordsman dubbed Highlander. Trained by Sean Connery’s Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez, he must face another immortal warrior, Clancy Brown’s Victor Kruger in modern-day New York City.

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Image via Summit Entertainment

Collider's own Steven Weintraub recently sat down with Stahelski to chat about John Wick: Chapter 2, and he took the opportunity to get some updates on the director's vision for the Highlander remake and how far along they are in the development process.

For his part, Stahelski is a huge fan of the property in every form—the film franchise, TV series and books—and points to the basic hook of the mythology as the reason the fandom has endured in spite of the original film's sillier qualities.

"If you go back and watch the original Highlander, whether the quality holds up or not or the filmmaking process holds up, there are things about that movie beneath just the shots and the lighting, there's a mythology there, for some reason, it hooks us. We love that world. everybody loves the immortal realm. Everybody loves the code -- There can be only one. There's something about it that hooks you, hooks me, hooks all the fanboys about it. I went so far as I know every episode of all six seasons, plus the seventh season if you count Raven as a series, plus the novels, there's something about the world that's hooking."

Another major part of the original's charm is owed to the iconic music of Queen and Freddie Mercury's operatic rock soundtrack, and Stahelski is keeping that in mind. "You've got to include the essence of Queen," he said, highlighting how the music helps set the tone:

"The tone of the first one just hit at that weird music video edge in the 80s that had Queen and for some reason, Queen just fits. I don't think you can do Highlander and bring about that kind of tone again with the mythological world and take it too seriously. Just as we did with Wick, you can't kill 80 people over a puppy and take yourself seriously. We got to let the audience know that we're having fun and that there is a world here.

 

Point being I can't see Highlander without Queen, without the queen center, without having Freddy Mercury, Prince of the Universe, and all this stuff. I can't picture the movie in my head without it."

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In fact, Stahelski says he's already started working with his John Wick composer Tyler Bates on updating the sound for a new score.

"We had a great composer on John Wick 1 and 2, Tyler Bates, who we think is one of the best in the business especially for meta-reality -- Guardians of the Galaxy, 300, John Wick. I've already talked extensively with him about how can we take the magic of what Freddie Mercury and Queen gave us and how can we transpose that to modern day and give us that edge?"

In terms of progress, he says Highlander is still in development and is a "massive priority" for Lionsgate and Summit who "absolutely know what they've got" because they're fans of the original and "they know the IP is loaded with potential." Currently, they're "in a pretty forward stage of development" working on the script with an aim to "reinvent the Highlander series" and build a narrative base than can span multiple films.

"We're currently doing a bit of work on the overall plot structure. When I came on board, they were trying to reinvent the single Highlander property. We've gone since back in and we would like to really expand the world, so we consider the same shortcomings don't happen again that happened on the original project, meaning you have one great movie and four questionable followups. We want to develop a property that can give us -- and again it's not about marketing, it's not so much about the financials, it's about how can we make a more mythological, chapter one, chapter two, whats a great way to tell this story?"

For inspiration on how to develop and expand the mythology and the story over the course of a trilogy, Stahelski is turning two sensible points of inspiration -- the long-running Highlander TV series and the reigning king of blockbuster trilogies, Star Wars.

"I think the TV series hit on a lot of great stuff wasn't in the feature, between the watchers and all the different types of immortals. How do we get this into a feature mode before we dribble it into the TV world? Well, let's restructure it in parts, let's look at it like it was a TV show, let's look at it like it was a high-end trilogy. How to we tell the story of the gathering the quickenings, the immortals and how do we really build this world out even more so than the original project. That's what we're restructuring right now. It's 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."

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Image via Lionsgate

Will Highlander maintain the visceral R-rated action that made his direction on John Wick such a hit? In terms of rating, Stahelski says they're planning to follow the John Wick course and pursue the vision for the film rather than MPAA approval. So far, he hasn't had any objection from the financiers and studio execs, who recruited him to bring the same innovative and stylish approach to swordplay that he did to John Wick's "Gun Fu".

"Thus far the people in charge of the pocket book and all that, they've asked [the rating question] and I said, 'Look, the way I work, the way we did John Wick, we never set about making a hardcore rated-R action movie, we said we're going to do this, this is the design we want to do, this is what we feel is fun. If heads coming apart is an R, great. If heads coming apart is a PG, great. Ratings are second to what we're going to do. Highlander, I think the action is -- at least what's  in my head -- is going to fall on a line, for sure. We want to design it what we think is aesthetically cool, and so far I've met no resistance, they're like, 'Look, whatever you did with John Wick with the gun stuff, we want you to try and do with the sword stuff. We want you to make something cool and something unique, and something that's going to make audiences say 'Wow, I haven't seen that before.'"

 

So I think that's the road they're letting me go down and what side of the line it falls on... I certainly don't want to be gory for gory's sake, and I don't want to be clean for clean's sake. We're not trying to hit four corners, we want to make great urban myth that goes through time, and we'll see where that lands."

Look for more from Steve's interview with Chad Stahelski soon.

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Image via 20th Century Fox