Conception Gregory Widen wrote the script for
Highlander, as a class assignment while he was an undergraduate in the screenwriting program at
UCLA, then under the title of
Shadow Clan. Widen drew inspiration from
Ridley Scott's 1977 film
The Duellists, centering on the brutal decades-long feud between two swordsmen. After reading the script, Widen's instructor advised him to send it to an agent. Widen sold the script for US$200,000. It became the first draft of what would eventually be the screenplay for the film. In a 2006 interview with
The Action Elite, Gregory Widen remarked, "I've always been amazed that a project I wrote as a UCLA student has had this kind of life. I think its appeal is the uniqueness of how the story was told and the fact it had a heart and a point of view about immortality."
Writing and development Widen's original draft of the script differed significantly from the film. The initial story was darker and more violent. Connor is born in 1408 rather than 1518. He lives with his mother and father and a younger brother. Heather does not exist; Connor is promised to a girl named Mara, who rejects him when she learns that he is immortal. Connor willingly leaves his village after his clan's attitude towards him changes, instead of being banished. His alias is Richard Taupin and his weapon is a custom
broadsword. Ramírez is a Spaniard born in 1100, instead of an ancient Egyptian born more than two thousand years earlier. The Kurgan is known as the Knight, using the alias Carl William Smith. He is not a savage, but a cold-blooded killer. Brenda is Brenna Cartwright, a historian at the
Smithsonian who sometimes helps the police. Other elements were changed during the rewrite. Initially, immortals could have children; in the draft Connor is said to have had 37. In a flashback in the first draft, Connor attends the funeral of one of his sons. His wife (in her 70s) and his two sons, who are in their mid 50s, see him revealed as an immortal. In the early draft, there is no release of energy when an immortal kills another nor is there any mention of the Prize. Immortals can still sense each other and, when Connor finally kills the Knight, he feels a sharp burning pain. As he senses another immortal nearby, the ending implies this is simply one of many battles as the Game continues. Director
Russell Mulcahy was flipping through a magazine and saw a photograph of
Christopher Lambert from his recent role as the title hero of
Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes. At the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival in 2015, Mulcahy said he showed the photo to his production staff and "I said, 'who's this?' They had no idea. He couldn't speak English. But he had the perfect look. And he learned English very fast." Widen had originally envisioned Connor as a very serious, grim character following centuries of violence and loss. The film portrayed MacLeod as a person who has suffered loss and fears new attachment, but doesn't deny the possibility of love, maintains a sense of humor about life, and tells his adopted daughter to have hope and remain optimistic. In a 2016 interview with
HeyUGuys, Lambert said part of what he found appealing about Connor MacLeod was the man still having humor and hope despite his long life and many losses. "It's the only role that I have played that is touching on the subject of immortality, through a character carrying five hundred years of violence, pain, love, and suffering on his shoulders, who is still walking around and being positive. That is what amazed me about him the most...it's difficult living through one life but to see all the people around you dying over and over. How do you cope with that pain? How do you have the strength to keep on walking, to keep being positive and optimistic? To be capable of falling in love again when you know the pain it creates when you lose them." Widen also had a different vision of the Kurgan originally. "Kurgan was the thing that was most different about my screenplay. He was much more tortured. The Kurgan in
Highlander as it is pretty much like
Freddy – he's just a cackling psychopath. I envisaged him as a guy who loses everything over time. The only thing he could hold onto, to give him a reason to get up in the morning, was to finish this thing – finish it with our guy [MacLeod]. It was more about that…it was just a reason to get up in the morning. Otherwise, what is the point? Everything is impermanent, everything is lost. That made him much more serious – in a weird way, a sympathetic bad guy." Widen commented that actor
Clancy Brown had similar thoughts about the Kurgan, wishing to make him more complex and interesting by dressing the villain in a bowler hat and suit, disguising his villainy rather than wearing the biker outfit he had instead. When brought to Russell Mulcahy, the title was
The Dark Knight.
Filming took place in Scotland, England, Wales and New York City. Director Russell Mulcahy filmed
Highlander using music video techniques including
fast cutting and pacy music. In preparation, actor Christopher Lambert spent months working four hours each morning with a dialect coach and four hours in the afternoons sword training with former Olympic fencer
Bob Anderson, who had been a
Darth Vader stunt double in the
Star Wars franchise. On filming a scene underwater in a Scottish
loch, Lambert said, "The first time it's a surprise. I thought the water would be cold, but not that cold. The second time you know it is going to be freezing. The third time you turn away and you say, 'That's the last take you're doing.'" Director of photography Arthur Smith actually filmed the scene in which fish fall out of MacLeod's kilt, but Lambert's kilt proved to be too short. Smith said, "I stuck part of a drain pipe above Chris's kilt out of camera range, and fed live trout down the tube." Smith also had difficulties shooting MacLeod meeting the Kurgan. It was raining that day and the crew had to use umbrellas and hair dryers to prevent water from hitting the camera lenses and appearing on the film. Smith also remembered that Lambert, who was near-sighted, "kept forgetting to take off his glasses as he came over the hill on his horse." in Central Park The filming of the parking garage scene took place in two different places. According to New York location manager Brett Botula, "the garage exterior is Manhattan, across from
Madison Square Garden, and the interior is 'somewhere in London.'" The
pro-wrestling match in the opening scene featured
The Fabulous Freebirds vs.
Greg Gagne,
Jim Brunzell and
The Tonga Kid. The scene in which the MacLeod clan sets off to battle is supposed to take place "in the village of
Glenfinnan, on the shore of
Loch Shiel" in the
Lochaber area, but was actually filmed at
Eilean Donan Castle, which is in the same general area but is really on the shore of
Loch Duich, a sea
loch near
Kyle of Lochalsh and the
Isle of Skye. According to the DVD commentary, the film's climax was originally intended to take place on top of the
Statue of Liberty. Then it was changed to an amusement park and finally changed to the rooftop of the
Silvercup Studios building. The scene in the alley where the Kurgan beheads Kastagir and stabs the former marine, followed by an explosion, was filmed in an alley in England even though it was set in New York. The opening voice-over by Connery has an echo effect because it was recorded in the bathroom of his Spanish villa, where he had been working on his Spanish accent for the film with a voice coach. It was played for the producers over the phone, and they approved of it because they could not discern the quality of the recording. In a
Reddit "
Ask Me Anything" session in 2014, Clancy Brown said "It was a strange set. We were all trying to make a good movie, and the producers were trying to make money any way they could, so there were a lot of things we had to work around, do on the cheap because of those producers." As an example of the lengths to which the producers were prepared to go to save production costs, they initially decided on the first day of filming that the extras would not receive breakfast. The crew threatened to leave, but only when one of the assistant directors threatened to bring in Connery to force the issue did the producers back down. The tension also led the largely Scottish extras to burn then-Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher in effigy. == Deleted scenes ==