What's happening with the Escape From New York remake?

19 January 2008

Gerard Wood

Confused about what’s happening with New Line’s remake of Escape From New York? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. This project has been plagued by complications, assertions and contradictions from the start.

Judging by the reaction of many fans of the original movie however, it’s hard not to feel that for them, at least, this uncertainty about the future of the remake is far better than any confirmation that the project is actually going ahead!

Still, in the interests of clearing up some of the confusion, the following is a summary of what’s been happening (as far as we at SFFMedia can tell).

Early last year New Line announced that Len Wiseman would direct a remake of John Carpenter’s Escape from New York, and although the news was not greeted with jubilation by many fans of the original, Wiseman’s involvement was some consolation. Wiseman is responsible for the very stylish Underworld and Underworld: Evolution, and more recently the action-packed Die Hard 4.0: Live Free or Die Hard and, it was felt, could do the project justice. Ken Nolan (Black Hawk Down) wrote the screenplay and Gerard Butler (300) was to star as Snake Plissken, the iconic character brought to life by Kurt Russell in the original.

To say that news of a remake wasn’t received with jubilation doesn’t really capture the dismay of many fans of the original. Some (including this writer) are just plain tired of the remake, much preferring studios to take some creative risk and give us something new. To be fair, New Line did indicate that the movie would be a prequel AND remake, presumably giving us Plissken’s back-story before setting off to rescue the President. (If you don’t know the story, a very brief summary of the plot can be found here).

Others objected more strongly to New Line’s audacity at even contempleting doing a remake of what is judged by many to be an American science fiction classic. An extremely optimistic (or naïve) online petition calls on New Line to drop the project entirely in favour of:

a sequel directed by John Carpenter starring Kurt Russell rather than a trendy remake of the original … with an all new cast and crew!

Kurt Russell, it appears, was equally under-whelmed by news of the remake. This is not particularly surprising as pulling on the boots and eye-patch of the anti-hero Snake Plissken was probably the high point of his career. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly hewent further andexpressed dismay that Scottish actor Gerard Butler was to take on the role of Plissken. As objections go this one proves once again (as if we needed anymore proof) that what most actors have to say off-screen is generally only suited to gossip columns, tabloids and other low lying areas:

I will say that when I was told who was going to play Snake Plissken, my initial reaction was 'Oh, man!' [Russell winces]. I do think that character was quintessentially one thing. And that is, American.

For which we can only conclude that as far as Russell is concerned it is necessary to be an American to play an American.

Anyway, in October came news that Wiseman had pulled out of the project and was to be replaced by Brett Ratner (Rush Hour trilogy, X-Men: The Last Stand). If fans of the original had been fired up by news of the remake, that was nothing compared to their reaction to this announcement. In short, and as politely as possible, Ratner was not a popular choice. A noisy campaign of objection ensued, and whether this was influential or not Ratner had soon made it clear that he would not be involved with the project.

To make matters worse, the loss of Wiseman was quickly followed by an announcement in Variety that Gerard Butler had also dropped out of the project due to “creative differences”. New Line then brought in Jonathan Mostow, director of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, to rewrite the script with an option to direct. As yet there is no word about whether or not he will be donning the director’s cap. Most recently, while promoting his latest movie, P.S. I Love You, Butler insisted that he had not actually dropped out of the project but was taking a cautious “wait and see position”.

Which is about the wisest thing anyone has had to say about this project for ages.

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