Reboot raises its ugly head once again.
Deadline’s Mike Fleming is hearing word that uber producer Joel Silver is teaming up with France-based production banner Studio Canal to tackle a reboot of John Carpenter’s cult classic sci-fi actioner ‘Escape From New York.’
Released in 1981, the original starred Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken, a tough convict dropped into a futuristic New York that has been turned into a post-apocalyptic maximum security prison. He’s charged with rescuing the president (Donald Pleasence), who is held hostage by the prison kingpin (Isaac Hayes) after his plane crashes within the city walls. Snake’s offered a pardon if he’s successful, but fitted with a lethal device that will kill him if he tries to run or misses the deadline.
Not that long ago ‘Fast & Furious’ producer Neil Moritz and director Breck Eisner (‘The Crazies’) were developing a reboot but opted out of moving forward, allowing the rights to lapse. Moritz and Eisner were rumoured to be eyeing the likes of Gerard Butler, Jeremy Renner and Tom Hardy to take the role of eye patch-wearing antihero Plissken.
Silver is believed to be planning a trilogy, starting with an origin story similar in tone to how ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ reboot that franchise.