The remake of Highlander has been stalled for some time but the last news we heard was that the director of 28 Weeks Later, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, was set to direct it. That no longer appears to be the case as news comes that he has left the project and Highlander is without a director.

There's no word on the replacement but it doesn't look like those behind the project want it to fall into turnaround or drop to the wayside, so will the project be looking for a new director quick smart or should it just forget it?

To be honest I, and a lot of others, had given up on Highlander, it kept dropping off film after film and it was struggling to keep going never reaching the same level as the original, and that was a shame because the original brought a great concept to the fore.

Highlander told the story of Immortals battling throughout time and started in the Scottish highlands in 1536 ending in New York City in 1986 and it really captured the imagination and built a strong fan base.

The problem is that they fluffed the second film and as each film was made the quality dropped and the audience slipped away.

With Juan Carlos Fresnadillo taking up the director's chair for a remake and Ryan Reynolds in line to play the new Highlander there was a lot of hope for the remake, the franchise needed it even if the original Highlander film didn't. While I'm not sure that Reynolds was the best casting for the role Fresnadillo was an interesting choice for directing.

However that is not to be as Deadline tells us that he's left the production amicably, it seems as though he and the studio couldn't come to agreement on their views of the film, I suspect the studio wanted a PG-13 teen audience friendly version whereas Fresnadillo wanted to make something a bit harder edged, after all we're talking about Immortals chopping each other's heads off.

Interestingly Fresnadillo was working on a remake of The Crow before he left to the remake of Highlander, so obviously the immediate speculation is that he might return to that production, after all it's not been racing along either has it?

The article reminds us that the script was written by Matt Holloway, Art Marcum and Melissa Rosenberg, with the latest draft by Noah Oppenheim, now looking at those names and the track record in film scripts I am thinking teen friendly and Fresnadillo was far from that in 28 Weeks Later.

So Highlander is dead, surely not forever though? After all, who wants to be stalled forever?