The in-development Highlander reboot has suffered some pretty big losses over the last year. First, in November 2012 it was reported that director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo - who had been attached to the project since 2011 - had decided to drop out of the film, and then this past summer we learned that Ryan Reynolds - who signed on in May 2012 - was hitting the road too. Finally, however, we have some good news for the movie, as apparently it's found a brand new director. Deadline is reporting that Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, best known for his work as a visual effects supervisor and the second unit director on Snow White and the Huntsman, has signed a deal with Summit to make the next Highlander movie as his directorial debut.
The project is moving forward with a script by Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, and the latest report says that they are sticking fairly close to the original movie from 1986. In that movie Christopher Lambert starred as Connor 'The Highlander' MacLeod, an immortal who spends centuries fighting fellow immortals for the chance to shape the future of mankind. Marcum and Holloway's previous credits include both Jon Favreau's Iron Man and Lexi Alexander's Punisher: War Zone.
Nicolas-Troyan's credits go back to 1997 when he worked as a visual effects compositor in his home country of France. Since moving to America the bulk of his work has been done with director Gore Verbinski, Nicolas-Troyan having worked on The Ring, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and The Weather Man. In addition to Snow White and the Huntsman he also worked as a second unit director on Disney's Maleficent starring Angelina Jolie. We'll see the results of that work when the film arrives in theaters next May.
Deadline had the chance to speak with Nicolas-Troyan after the gig was announced, and he seemed to be elated to be a part of the project, saying,
"I have been working on my pitch for this since the summer, and when I got there I met the original producer and I just started geeking out and he loved it. The first movie came out when I was a teenager in France and it was one of my favorite films of those years. I loved the series also, they shot a lot of it in France, on the Seine River. My first reaction, like everybody else, was, really, do we need a remake? Then I read the script, and I thought about how Russell Mulcahy was this super visual video director who brought the pulse of the 80s to the film so well. I started thinking about taking those great characters and matching them with a modern, visceral take, and then I was in love with the idea and I just went for it."
The filmmaker's only directing credit is a short film titled Carrot vs. Ninja, which he also wrote and released in 2011. Because the internet is a magical place where everything in world seems to be at our fingertips, you can watch Carrot vs. Ninja below:
