It’s out with vampires and werewolves for the Twilight screenwriter, and in with immortal Egyptians with Spanish names and Japanese swords.
Back in 2008, the studio behind the Twilight movies, Summit Entertainment, announced that it was remaking the original Highlander movie. Now it seems the Twilight connection will run even deeper, as Melissa Rosenberg – who wrote the three Twilight movies that Summit has released so far, as well as the two in production – has signed up to create the script.
The years have not been kind to the Highlander franchise. The first movie starred Christopher Lambert and Sean Connery and told the story of a race of immortal swordsmen, fighting amongst themselves for a mystical prize. It was good, but it left no room for a sequel. Unfortunately, that didn’t stop people from making one: Highlander 2: The Quickening. The movie was so bad and incomprehensible that the director wanted his name taken off it, and most fans consider it to be non-canon. Not that the subsequent sequels were much to write home about either. They never equalled the low point of The Quickening, but still met with overwhelmingly negative responses. With that legacy, it’s hard to see how this reboot can be any worse.
Aside from her work penning supernatural love triangles, Rosenberg was one of the writers for the TV show Dexter and has been nominated for two Emmy awards. Unfortunately, she’s also been nominated for a Razzie award, for her script for New Moon, but lost out to – or triumphed over, depending on your point of view – the writers of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Rosenberg is not the first person to work on the script however. The initial draft was written by Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, two of the writers for Iron Man.
Justin Lin – who has directed every Fast and the Furious movie since Tokyo Drift – is attached to direct the movie, and Neal Moritz – who’s also working on the Total Recall reboot with Colin Farrell – is producing. Last year, Mortiz said that the movie would be an origin story, and wouldn’t come out until 2012 at the earliest.
Source: Heat Vision Blog
