Chad Stahelski's Highlander reboot was scheduled to begin filming late last month, but the project was recently hit with a setback after its lead actor suffered an injury while training to play the immortal warrior of the title.
Details on Man of Steel and The Witcher star Henry Cavill's injury were not disclosed, but it was evidently serious enough for production to be pushed back to early next year.
Now, Cavill has taken to Instagram to share an update on his rehab with a series of photos detailing his physical therapy sessions. Based on what we see here, we can surmise that he sustained some kind of injury to his left ankle.
It's probably going to be another while before Cavill is ready to start swinging a sword on set, but he certainly appears to have kept himself in tip-top shape during his recovery.
Not too surprisingly, these photos have led to a renewed fan-campaign for the actor to return to the role of Superman, presumably in an Elseworlds project (we can't imagine even the #RestoreTheSnyderVerse crowd would believe that Cavill would ever be brought back to replace David Corenswet in the DCU).
Joining Cavill will be Dave Bautista (Guardians of the Galaxy, Dune, Blade Runner 2049) as The Kurgan, who was memorably brought to life by Clancy Brown in the '80s movie. Russell Crowe is also on board as MacLeod's mentor and fellow immortal warrior, Ramirez, who was played by Sean Connery in the 1986 original.
Industry actress Marisa Abela will play the female lead, with Karen Gillan as Connor's wife Heather, and Djimon Hounsou as an "immortal African warrior." More recently, we learned that WWE Superstar Drew McIntyre is also on board as Connor's brother.
Earlier this week, the news broke that Jeremy Irons has also joined the cast as the movie’s secondary antagonist, who is described as "the leader of a secret order called The Watchers, who are keeping an eye on the immortals and see them as a threat to humanity."
Stahelski recently revealed some changes to the original movie's timeline.
“We’re bringing it forward from the early 1500s in the highlands to the beyond present-day New York and Hong Kong, and seeing how it goes,” he said. “There’s big opportunity for action. There’s a chance to play a character that not a lot of people get to play. And it’s a bit of a love story, but not how you think. On John Wick, I learned a lot on how to bend the storytelling a little… another kind of myth.“
Michael Finch penned the script for the remake, with Scott Stuber and Nick Nesbitt on board as producers alongside Neal H. Moritz, Stahelski’s 87Eleven Entertainment, Josh Davis of Davis Panzer Productions, and Louise Rosner.
Plot details are still under wraps, but it sounds like this is going to be a fairly direct remake. At the very least, we expect it to stick to the basic premise of the original: A race of immortals do battle across time with the ultimate goal of emerging as the sole survivor (decapitation gets the job done) and claiming the prize of mortality. In the end, there can be only one.
The project was initially set up at Lionsgate, but jumped ship to Amazon MGM Studios’ United Artists earlier this year. Production recently hit a setback when Cavill suffered a training injury.
When the mystical Russell Nash (Christopher Lambert) kills a man in a sword fight in a New York City parking lot, he leaves a sliver of an ancient weapon lodged in a car in the process. After brilliant forensics specialist Brenda Wyatt (Roxanne Hart) recovers evidence of the mysterious weapon, she and her partner, Lt. Frank Moran (Alan North), embark on an investigation Of Nash that will land them in the middle of a dangerous, centuries-old feud between powerful immortals