Russell Crowe To Join Henry Cavill In 'Highlander' Reboot As Ramirez
Russell Crowe has reportedly joined the cast of Chad Stahelski and Henry Cavill’s Highlander as Ramirez.
Collider originally reported that Crowe will star in the film alongside Cavill, but did not share who he would be playing. However, following Collider’s original report Deadline shared that Crowe would be playing Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez Ramirez, who was originally portrayed by Sean Connery in the 1986 film.
The film is being produced by Amazon MGM Studios through its United Artists Division after previously being at Lionsgate.
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Director Chad Stahelski has been working on this Highlander reboot as well as a larger Highlander universe for quite some time. In 2017 he informed Collider, “We’re currently doing a bit of work on the overall plot structure. When I came on board, they were trying to reinvent the single Highlander property. We’ve gone since back in and we would like to really expand the world, so we consider the same shortcomings don’t happen again that happened on the original project, meaning you have one great movie and four questionable followups.”
“We want to develop a property that can give us — and again it’s not about marketing, it’s not so much about the financials, it’s about how can we make a more mythological, chapter one, chapter two, what’s a great way to tell this story,” he said.
Cavill boarded the project in 2021 and spoke about his role and character on the Happy, Sad, Confused podcast back in February 2024. He said, “Obviously, I’ve watched them when I was a lot younger and since rewatched, but also the TV show. I really enjoyed the lore behind it. That sort of sense of a tragic warrior with more of a story to tell rather than just a cool guy with a sword doing cool things. And this goes even deeper into that.”
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Stahelski provided more details about Cavill’s character as well as the plot of the film.
He told The Direct back in November, “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.”
“There's big opportunity for action,” he continued. “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.”
As for Cavill’s character he revealed, “My selling point was, to [Henry Cavill], look, you've got a guy that's been alive for over 500 years. He's the last person in the world that wanted to be in this situation. So you get to cover quite a broad spread of a character arc there.”
Stahelski added, “And you get to experience someone that's trained over 500 years and sort of played [with many types of] martial arts..."
What do you make of Crowe joining the Highland reboot?
I'm generally not a fan of reboots but this might be OK. It's a good story with a lot of potential depth. I hope they do a good job with it.