Back in March, it was announced the Robert Rodriguez will be in the director’s chair for 20th Century Fox’s reboot of Escape from New York. Today, we have an update.
Neil Cross (Luther) who penned the script told Deadline that not only has John Carpenter, who wrote and directed the 1981 original, has not only read the script but has given it the green light.
John Carpenter on the set of Escape From New York (1981)
“Robert Rodriguez is attached to direct and it’s looking good and exciting,” Cross told Deadline. “It was quite a challenging script, it’s a challenging thing to reinvent. One of the most terrifying sentences I’ve ever heard in my life is ‘we’ve given the script to John Carpenter’. I crawled around for three days thinking ‘oh my god’ but we got John Carpenter’s seal of approval. He approved it and that’s all I need.” He continued, “You never quite know [if it’s done] but I might need to do some rewrites and do some nip and tuck but in the first approximation, my job is done.”
The last we heard, Carpenter is set to executive produce the film that is being described as both a prequel and a reboot.
The original film, set in 1997, stars Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken, an eyepatch-wearing, former special forces badass who is put up to rescuing the president (Donald Pleasence) after Air Force One crashes into New York, now a maximum security area for prisoners. After being convicted of trying to rob the Federal Reserve, Snake is given 22 hours to rescue the president and a tape that holds the key to peace. If Snake fails, well, he’s wired to explode.
The original co-starred Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Issac Hayes, Season Hubley, Harry Dean Stanton, Adrienne Barbeau, and Tom Atkins. Here’s the trailer to refresh your memory.
