Luther’s Neil Cross to write the Escape From New York reboot

John Carpenter’s Escape From New York is a classic and Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken is hard to beat. However, there have been plans for a remake for a long time. At one point Silver Pictures and StudioCanal were planning on making a trilogy with either Charlie Hunnam, Jon Bernthal or Dan Stevensas Snake Plissken. That didn’t happen and the rights ended up with 20th Century Fox.

It turns out that they are moving ahead as Luther creator, Neil Cross, has been brought on-board to write the script.

The studio is  hoping to relaunch the property as it did with its Planet of the Apes movie series, which became a critical and commercial hit.

Carpenter is creatively involved and is exec producing. The rights originally came from Studiocanal. Mike Ireland is overseeing for the studio.

I have no problem with remakes. The original is always there to fall back on and you can end up with a decent film, but I do think this could be a tricky one to get right. As Escape From L.A. proved, Snake doesn’t always work well if he doesn’t have a decent script.

The fact Neil Cross is writing the screenplay does show promise as he can get that darkness and grittiness needed for the film.

Cautiously optimistic for this one.

Of course, who could play Snake?