“Escape From New York” Japanese Theatrical Poster
For a little while there, it looked like we were going to get a reboot of Escape From New York reboot from New Line Cinema with Breck Eisner (Sahara) in the director’s chair and Gerard Butler wearing the eyepatch originally made famous by Kurt Russell. The project eventually fell through and New Line let the rights to the franchise expire. Now Hollywood mega-producer Joel Silver (Lethal Weapon, Predator) has swooped in to secure the rights to the 1981 cult film directed by John Carpenter.
The plan? To turn Escape From New York into its own trilogy of films, supposedly modeled after the Planet of the Apes films. There are no directors or actors attached to this potential remake so for now it’s in the early, early stages. Considering that the original Escape was only able to spawn one universally-disliked sequel, though, it’ll be interesting to see how Joel Silver plans to turn this into a trilogy.
Updates: According to New York Daily News, Tom Hardy and Jason Statham are up for the role of Snake Plissken. | Producer Joel Silver spills details about the Escape From New York trilogy, courtesy of Collider. Apparently, Silver is influenced by Rocksteady’s Arkham City video game.
BREAKING NEWS: Collider reports that Silver Pictures and StudioCanal are making moves and have their eye on Charlie Hunnam (Pacific Rim), Jon Bernthal (TV’s The Walking Dead, The Wolf of Wall Street) and Dan Stevens (The Guest) to portray the new Snake Plissken. Stay tuned…
