Talking to the Happy Sad Confused podcast, the John Wick director suggested his approach to the new film in development will be to launch a potential series of films. He says the idea is to not rush the first movie to the original film’s conclusion — which crowned MacLeod the sole survivor of a group of dueling immortals following their climactic Gathering.

“I think we have some very good elements now,” he said. “The trick is when you have the tagline, ‘There can only be one,’ you can’t just kill everybody the first time.”

Stahelski also said the film will incorporate elements of the 1992 syndicated Highlander TV series, which ran for six seasons.

“Our story engages a lot of the same characters, but we’ve also brought in elements of all the TV shows,” Stahelski said. “We’re trying to do a bit of a prequel — a setup to The Gathering — so we have room to grow the property.”

He noted he hasn’t thought of John Wick as a franchise (despite that Continental TV show coming) but he does see Highlander as a potential franchise.

“We have ideas for days for the coolest characters [that could make for] an epic TV show,” he said. “I just think that’s rich mythology when you can pick any period of time, any nationality, any culture, any type of person and make them an immortal that have to duel and deal with the burden of immortality — that’s fucking cool.”