That long, long, long-gestating Escape From New York remake just took a giant step forward. Deadline reported and John Carpenter later confirmed that Robert Rodriguez will direct the the reboot of John Carpenter’s 1981 classic.
The film is set up at 20th Century Fox, who won the bidding war for the rights in 2015, and Luther‘s Neil Cross has been working on the screenplay. According to Deadline, “The hope is to reinvent the property with an eye toward launching a Planet Of The Apes-like franchise.” In fairness, the original nearly ended up as something along those lines, with Escape From LA and that Snake Plissken idea that became Ghosts Of Mars. Oh, Ghosts Of Mars.
Rodriguez is currently working on Alita: Battle Angel at Fox, which had been set up by James Cameron before he decided to hand over directing duties to the From Dusk Till Dawn director.
Carpenter seems very happy with the decision, as he took to Facebook to confirm the news.
He also makes a lot of sense for this. Rodriguez is clearly a huge fan of John Carpenter movies, as a slew of his post-Mariachi films have included homages to the master, from The Faculty‘s long corridors to about 70% of his underrated Grindhouse effort Planet Terror. In fact, if they want to cast Freddy Rodriguez as Snake, we’d be fine with that.
If you’ve never seen the original, Kurt Russell starred as the eyepatch-wearing badass Snake Plissken, a dangerous convict who’s roped into breaking into the prison island of New York after the President’s plane crash-lands. With the President set to deliver a message that will stop the next world war, Snake’s only got 22 hours to dodge the gangs, killers and cannibals, and find a way to get them both back out. It also starred Donald Pleasence, Isaac Hayes, Harry Dean Stanton, Adrienne Barbeau, Ernest Borgnine and Lee Van Cleef. So, it’s going to need a hell of a cast.
This is another big step forward for the Carpenter back catalogue. Halloween is finally moving forward with David Gordon Green and Danny McBride, and we’ve got our fingers crossed that JC will be on soundtrack duties.
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