Corona | Coming Attractions

Yes, there is a remake of Highlander being pursued. While the project hasn't progressed past the script stage, it's being developed by Summit Entertainment, the same studio behind the Twilight franchise. In the spring of 2008 Iron Man screenwriters Art Marcum and Matt Holloway were hired to write the remake and apparently they've finished because the first published review of their screenplay has gone up at CC2K. The problem is that the reviewer says that the Highlander remake is crap. Spoilers be ahead!

Marcum and Holloway retain most of the original Highlander's characters and premise. Connor MacLeod is still the hero, The Kurgan is still the villain, Connor's Egyptian friend and mentor Ramirez is retained and even Brenda, MacLeod's love interest from the 1986 film, is in it. It's still about Immortals who are fighting each other to attain The Prize and who cannot attack each other on holy ground. So if it sounds pretty much like the original Highlander what's wrong with it? "It isn't so much that the screenwriters (Art Marcum & Matt Holloway) are telling a different story, but that they are telling the same story in the wrong way," writes CC2K's reviewer Big Ross. An example that Ross gives is allowing Immortals in the new Highlander to use firearms instead of only wielding swords and edged weapons. "This all might be practical, but by including this element much of the charm of the original film is lost," writes the reviewer.

But if CC2K's reviewer had issues with the way the story is told in the first two acts of the screenplay then he full on hates the climax and conclusion of Marcum and Holloway's script. "The problem is that instead of taking the essential story of the original movie, and expanding upon it to allow for additional films, the screenwriters instead decide to tell almost exactly the same story, and simply pull a fast twist at the end to make room for more," Big Ross writes. He explains what happens at the end of the script in his review so you won't be left hanging if you really want to know what got his goat, but the ending's logistical problems are just a part of the script's overall troubles. "I would venture a guess that some of [these problems] will get addressed in the sequel sure to follow this remake, but that would imply that the screenwriters are operating with some degree of intelligence," Ross writes. "After reading this script, I'm just not sure I believe that."

Read the full script review at CC2K and judge for yourself if there can be only one Highlander.