There are plenty of fans of the Highlander movies, and luckily moviegoers are going to be treated to a new reboot starring Henry Cavill. John Wick's Chad Stahelski is directing, so the movie is sure to have plenty of thrilling action sequences. The 43-year-old actor recently got real about the intense training he went going through, and I'm exhausted just hearing about it.
Henry Cavill has gotten superhero fit before, thanks to his tenure playing Superman (which is streaming with an HBO Max subscription). Still, in an interview with Men's Journal, he spoke about the wild way he had to prepare to play the titular role of the new Highlander film. In his words:
I trained for about two years to prep for Highlander. What they did was train me in various different styles of martial arts, various different styles of swords, and various different disciplines. Then, I had a lexicon of moves and abilities, and they knew what I was really good at and they knew what I wasn’t so good at. Then, we could build something on the day, which was always the case.
Highlander is making some changes to characters, but one thing that will definitely stick around is thrilling action scenes. Henry Cavill worked out hard not only to look swole on set, but in order to safely use different martial arts and weaponry in the highly anticipated reboot. It truly sounds exhausting, and I can't wait to see those efforts on the big screen.
Despite all the prep involved, it's surprising that Highlander's fight scenes were choreographed rather last-minute. Cavill was prepared thanks to his intense training, but I would have assumed that things didn't come together basically on set. The Man of Steel actor went on to share:
I was learning every single fight I did in those moments before we shot it. And you can only do that when you have that level of training with someone or a group like 87Eleven, which is Chad Stahelski’s company.
Stahelski is known for crafting thrilling and wildly complicated fight scenes, especially throughout the John Wick movies. Usually that includes dizzying fight choreography, but it sounds like things were a bit more improvised for Highlander. Luckily, Cavill had trained enough that he was prepared for anything the filmmaker/stuntman threw at him.
In the same interview, the Enola Holmes actor spoke more about what it was like working on the new Highlander, and the toll its process took on him... especially all those action scenes. In his words:
I went well beyond exhaustion on a daily basis, but it always felt worth it. It always felt enormously, well, it feels now enormously rewarding, and it always felt worth it at the end of the day.
It sounds like Cavill is really psyched about the new Highlander movie, even if he was tired while filming as Connor MacLeod. All the prep seemingly worked out, and I can't wait to see the final product whenever Chad Stahelski's blockbuster arrives in theaters.
Unfortunately, Highlander doesn't have a release date at the time of writing this story. Obviously, it won't arrive on the 2026 movie release list, but it's currently unclear if we should expect it in 2027 or 2028. Fingers crossed we get some answers sooner rather than later.
