A lot of sites out there are introducing this story with some variation of the question “Whatever happened to the next installment in the Highlander franchise?” Frankly, I couldn’t care less. Highlander was a brilliant film that has been cut to ribbons by the subsequent attempts to make it a franchise. It never should have been a franchise.
As a stand alone picture, the first movie is phenomenal. The only decent sequel to come was the third film (Highlander III: The Sorcerer) and that was only because just about anything would have looked better after Highlander II (and because it was smart enough to pretend the second film didn’t happen). The television series was decent enough, if there had to be one, but the attempt to merge the two in Highlander: Endgame was embarrassing.
So, there was supposed to be a fifth film, wasn’t there? What happened to it? The same thing that’s happened to every Highlander film since the first one, Pinky: reediting. Moviehole reports that Adrian Paul has posted on his official site that the movie has returned to the editing bay as the producers attempt to improve it. Improve it? Producers? Adrian Paul’s website? (sorry, I forget everyone has a website these days)
Every Highlander film to come out (including the first one) has eventually had a recut version released to DVD. The franchise has been cut up so many times it makes the Frankenstein monster look good… which gives me an idea for the next movie. Adrian Paul squares off with the Frankenstein monster…
Apparently the issues in the movie are things you’d think they’d have figured out by now. Primarily – the immortals apparently die too easily, and there’s no explanation of who the immortals are or why they exist. Do we really need to explain that again? Can’t we go back to pretending we don’t know? If someone says Zeiss again I swear I’m going to go ballistic on some producers. There’s also some mention of issues with some cannibalism or something like that. Because the only thing cooler than immortals who swordfight to behead each other, are immortals who behead each other and eat them.
Lionsgate currently has Highlander: The Source slated for a September release.
