‘Escape From New York’ Reboot On The Way, Trilogy Planned

Escape from New York reboot talks have heated up again with Joel Silver taking the reins along with Studio Canal for a planned Snake Plissken trilogy, Deadline reported on Monday.

The body is barely cold on the abandoned remake attempt from New Line, which had favored Gerard Butler for the eye-patch-wearing icon, Moviehole noted in April 2012.

Josh Brolin had also been once rumored for the part.

With Silver taking over the Escape from New York reboot, it’s likely most inspiration will come from the original film alone. It’s also a given that someone new will be playing Plissken, but who?

Could Butler jump back to the front of the ranks, or would newcomers Jeremy Renner and Tom Hardy (also rumored) stand a better chance?

That much isn’t known, but Deadline noted that Silver’s take on the material will be “entirely new,” and that he plans a trilogy similar to the newest Planet of the Apes reboot, starting with an origin story and developing from there.

Snake Plissken followed his first outing with Escape from L.A. in 1996, but the sequel did not perform as expected despite grossing around the same amount.

(After all, $25.4 million in 1996 dollars wasn’t quite the same as $25.2 million 15 years earlier.)

Despite the second entry’s ho-hum performance, Carpenter and Russell have continued to champion the character in comics, video games, a TV series proposal that was never picked up, and a potential third film called Escape from Earth.

Russell hasn’t commented on the latest news, but it’s unlikely his feelings have changed since 2007 when he spoke out against Butler-as-Snake and a remake without his involvement, IGN reported.

Citing comments made to Entertainment Weekly, the IGN report was that Russell was annoyed by any plans for redoing what he and Carpenter did in 1981.

“(Expletive) that! I am Snake Plissken,” Russell said. “It’s like Sean Connery always watching someone else do their version of Bond. … People come up to me and say, ‘You played Snake Plissken.’ I didn’t play Snake Plissken, I created him!”

In other words, don’t expect Russell, who worked with Quentin Tarantino on Death Proof and recently pulled out of Django Unchained, to make any cameos playing second fiddle to a new version of himself.

Would you like to see an Escape from New York reboot (and a new Snake Plissken) or should Hollywood leave this one alone?