Breck Eisner in talks to direct Escape From New York

: 27 April 2010; Gerard Wood

The last time we had anything to report about the long suffering remake of Escape From New York it was that New Line Cinema had finally got a script that it was happy with courtesy of Allan Loeb. Loeb is credited with breathing new life into the project and succeeding in the difficult task of capturing the humour of John Carpenter’s iconic ant-hero Snake Plissken "without slipping into camp". That announcement came in February and it was the first time we’d heard anything for almost two years, but there seems to be some momentum building now. It’s just been reported that Breck Eisner, fresh from directing his reinvention of George Romero’s classic horror The Crazies, is in negotiations to direct the film.

Eisner is at least the fourth director attached to this remake, following Len Wiseman (back when there was something going for this project), Brett Ratner (back when most of us lost any interest in it whatsoever) and then Jonathan Mostow (T3: Rise of the Machines, say no more). I haven’t seen The Crazies, so can’t say whether this latest development is good news or not, but Rotten Tomatoes gives it a respectable rating of 71% (positive reviews). Consensus seems to be that the remake “gets the job done” but is otherwise unmemorable, which is hardly inspiring. Still, I’ll withhold judgment until I’ve had a chance to check it out.

The next announcement will either be that the project has gone tits up yet again or that someone has landed the role of Snake Plissken, immortalised by Kurt Russell.

The remake is said to blend John Carpenter’s original plot with a back story for Plissken, which must be one of the most misguided attempts at originality in many years. A great part of Plissken's power in our imagination is the mystery surrounding his past. Explain it away and what's left: just another gun-toting smart arse.

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