Papa Vinyard here, now here's a little somethin' for ya...
After going through directors Justin Lin and Juan Carlos Fesnadillo, the producers of the HIGHLANDER remake have found the guy for the job. According to Deadline, the film will be directed by Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, who directed second unit on SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN and the upcoming MALEFICENT. He also did visual effects work on the first two PIRATES movies and THE RING, as well as directing the short movie CARROT VS. NINJA, which you can see below.
Carrot vs Ninja from Cedric Nicolas-Troyan on Vimeo.
Mr. Nicolas-Troyan, a "Comic-Con-caliber fan of HIGHLANDER", offered Deadline some choice quotes:
"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,” Nicolas-Troyan told me. “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.
For me, it all comes down to that first movie, but there are great themes in the show. It’s the rare cross-genre concept that has elements of the Western, time travel, fantasy, action, contemporary. There are universal themes, but of course you need to provide the answers like the first film did. Who are these guys with swords? Why are they fighting each other? What is the prize and how are they drawn to each other? There is far more at work here I want to explore than the lightning that happens during the Quickening.
Back then Christopher hadn’t done a lot of things and was just emerging, and Sean Connery, that movie brought about a real resurgence for him. We have to find that younger emerging guy, and surround him with a strong Kurgan, and an actor who shines as Ramirez the way Connery did in that film film.”
Even though he's a first-timer, his comments make it seem like his heart is in the right place, and that he'll try his best to both pay homage to the original and to give it enough of a dust-off so that it doesn't feel like another cookie-cutter remake. I dig his short; it has a decent sense of rhythm and action, and it gives you a vague notion of what his HIGHLANDER duels could feel like.
And that bit about how crucial it is to find the right guy to play Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez is certainly interesting. Who would you guys pick to play Ramirez, The Kurgan, or Connor MacLeod of the clan MacLeod?
-Vincent Zahedi
”Papa Vinyard”
vincentzahedi@gmail.com
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