In much the same way that he helped give Keanu Reeves his first truly watchable role in years, John Wick co-director Chad Stahelski is going to see what he can do about undoing that bullshit alien stuff from the Highlander movies. Stahelski has been tapped to direct a reboot of the property, and he’s invested in reimagining a lot of what we know about immortal beings who have nighttime sword fights. To that end, he’s been given free rein—Stahelski tells Entertainment Weekly that “the creative team, the producers and the studio that’s behind it have kind of said, ‘It’s yours to play with’.”
The director says he wants to build a whole world of immortals, which sounds like a good plan for a man already eyeing a trilogy of new Highlander films. But when he says “world,” he’s not referring to that Zeistian nonsense from Highlander II: The Quickening, which revealed that—surprise!–all of these decapitation-prone people were actually extraterrestrials. Stahelski says he doesn’t see any need to complicate a storyline about a group of people who are only in danger when they run into others like them: “My personal opinion, I don’t want to see any of that. I’m not interested.”
But while there won’t be any spaceships, there will be lots and lots of stunt work. Stahelski tells EW the films will reinvent dueling, pistol and sword. In the meantime, you can check out John Wick: Chapter 2 for more of Stahelski’s stunt and directing work.