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Maybe it’s because Snake Plissken is still a viable Halloween costume, or maybe there’s something timely about a dystopian world in which all of New York City has been turned into a massive prison, but numerous filmmakers have been eager to re-imagine John Carpenter‘s “Escape from New York” for the modern day. No one has been able to… yet.
In the first major announcement of this year’s CinemaCon, Studiocanal shared that it’s going to try. The indie distributor, which presented in Las Vegas as part of the first CinemaCon showcase for indies, said a new remake of Carpenter’s 1981 action/sci-fi is coming, this one in partnership with producers The Picture Company, which was most recently behind “A Complete Unknown.”
Studiocanal EVP Global Marketing and Distribution Hugh Spearing announced the news on Monday, though no other filmmaker details were revealed. Spearing said more news will be announced soon.
If you’ve gotten excited about an “Escape from New York” remake before, it’s because filmmakers like Joel Silver, Robert Rodriguez, and most recently the Radio Silence team have all been, at one point, attached to try and bring a new version — or “reimagining,” if you will — to the screen. Rodriguez was going to direct for 20th Century Studios back in 2017, but the shift to Disney probably had a hand in that getting put on the back burner.
Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett, and Chad Villella, a.k.a. Radio Silence (the team behind “Scream 5” and the “Ready or Not” films), were the next attached to the project, which also had The Picture Company involved via an overall deal and for 20th Century to distribute domestically. Because Studiocanal owns the rights to the original, it would have distributed that iteration internationally, but now Studiocanal appears to be handling worldwide.
And dating way back to 2014, producer Joel Silver had a vision of an “Escape from New York” trilogy of films, including one inspired by the Batman video game “Arkham City” that would have examined how exactly NYC became a prison, with a bit of an origin story for Plissken. You could also count Luc Besson as an unofficial person to reimagine “Escape from New York,” as in 2016 he lost a plagiarism lawsuit to Studiocanal over the premise of his 2012 film “Lockout.”
In “Escape from New York,” Russell plays the eye-patch wearing, gun-toting badass Plissken who, in a dystopian 1997, is given 24 hours to to break into the maximum security prison that now is New York City in order to rescue the U.S. President after Air Force One crash lands there. Russell returned for the sequel “Escape from L.A.” in 1996.
“Escape from New York” isn’t even the only 1981 cult movie that Studiocanal today also announced it was remaking, as it also wants to reimagine a new version of Joe Dante’s werewolf horror movie “The Howling.” That project is currently in development.
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