Any mention of remaking Escape From New York is enough to get a lot of people very upset, but New Line is pressing ahead regardless (and has been now for several years), assuming that fans of the original will go watch it just to moan, while a whole new generation will get their first exposure to the story via the new version.
Variety reports that director Breck Eisner is now in talks to helm the film, replacing both Len Wiseman and Brett Ratner, who’ve been attached at various points in the past. Eisner isn’t a too odious choice, as while Sahara was rubbish, the recent Crazies remake was better than expected. He may not be John Carpenter, but he showed with the Romero makeover that he could make a decent, if slightly generic, movie.
The last we heard, while contractually they have to keep the Snake Plissken character the same – eyepatch and all – they’d change some of the other things round a bit for this remake. Rather than rescuing the president who’s crash in a Manhattan that’s been turned into a prison, Plissken will now be saving a female senator, in order to up the possibilities for banter, although it’s possible she may become a female president. The city is also likely to be less destroyed than it was in Carpenter’s movie, in order to keep the budget under control.
However while it seems they now have a director, they don’t have a lead actor. Gerard Butler was attached at one point, but then dropped out. So who should be the new Snake? (And the answer ‘nobody’ doesn’t seem to be an option at this point).