After successfully remaking George A. Romero‘s The Crazies, director Breck Eisner is attempting repeat success with a remake of John Carpenter‘s Escape From New York. Len Wiseman and Brett Ratner were both rumored to direct at one point.
Gerard Butler was initially attached to star, but has since dropped out over “creative differences.” Black Hawk Down screenwriter Ken Nolan was working on the script, but there is no mention of him in Variety’s story. He was going to combine an original story in the 1981 original. Allan Loeb (The Switch, Wall Street 2) has “saved the production” rewriting the script. Vulture reported some details on the update a few months ago, which you can find below.
Loeb nailed the humor in Plissken without slipping into camp, and he changed Snake’s rescue-mission target from a president to a female senator, thereby upping the banter quotient.
This Manhattan was evacuated and turned into a privately run penal colony after the detonation of a crude radioactive dirty bomb on the outskirts of the city. “It is not a disaster movie,” says a source close to the project. “It is an exposé of an ecosystem, if you put a huge wall around Manhattan and then dropped in the most fucked-up, dangerous criminals on Earth.”
And, as we know, Snake is legally obligated to wear an eye patch and “always be a bad-ass.”
I think Eisner had an incredible sense of style in this year’s The Crazies so I’m completely down with him doing this remake. I’ve only seen bits of the original, so I don’t hold on to it as dearly as others. I definitely will check out the Blu-ray soon.
Are you excited to see the return of Snake Plissken?