The ‘Escape from New York‘ remake has been talked about for some time and now Robert Rodriguez will be stepping into John Carpenter’s directors’ chair…
Industry site Deadline is reporting that the remake of sf action classic Escape from New York, the signature outing for genre mastermind John Carpenter, will be helmed by none other than Robert Rodriguez. Twentieth Century Fox will be producing the film after they successfully won the reboot rights in 2015. The new screenplay will be written by Luther scribe Neil Cross. John Carpenter will be on board as an executive producer and the intent is to apparently create a new franchise.
Long-time action fans won’t need reminding that the original film, released in 1981, told of a (then) futuristic New York circa 1997, a city that had been walled off and its criminal inmates left to create their own existence and world within those borders. Complications arise when the President’s plane is brought down over the city and a weathered mercenary Kurt Russell’s iconic Snake Plissken, is forced to head into the city to retrieve the Commander-in-Chief (played by Donald Pleasence) and the important information he is carrying. If Plissken fails or tries to escape, a micro-explosive planted in his neck will explode after the countdown clock runs out.
Rodriguez – whose work includes Desperado, From Dusk ‘Til Dawn, Spy Kids – has just finished work on Fox‘s live-action adaptation of Yukito Kishiro’s manga graphic novels: Alita – Battle Angel, from a screenplay by James Cameron and Laeta Kalogridis. That stars Rosa Salazar and Christoph Waltz and is heading for a July 2018 release. There’s no news on how fast the …New York project will turn around, though it’s long been considered a high priority by Fox.
