New ‘Escape From New York’ Reboot Details Revealed

A remake/reboot of John Carpenter’s classic Escape From New York has been in the works for a number of years, but new details have now emerged that it will be a prequel, kicking off a new trilogy of Snake Plissken movies that will lead up the events of the original film.

20th Century Fox hopes the new films will reboot the franchise while still remaining “in canon”, much like the studio has done recently with Plant of the Apes.

Bloody-Disgusting further adds that Snake Plissken, originally played by Kurt Russell, will not have his signature eye patch, though I completely expect this decision to be revisited before production actually begins, unless of course they want to reveal just how Plissken got the eye patch in the first place during the course of the film.

Tons of additional new details were revealed earlier today in report from The Wrap, among them that Neal Cross, creator of the BBC crime series Luther, beat out several writers to win the writing job, and delivered a first-draft in late October.

The Wrap’s report also includes the following 10 reveals about what we can expect:

1. Snake Plissken’s real name. While it is clearly stated early on in the original film that his name is “S.D. Bob Plissken”, his full name in the new movie is Colonel Robert “Snake” Plissken.

2. Our bad guy won’t be the Duke of New York. Instead, he’s the lean, intensely charismatic Thomas Newton, the playboy heir to an agrochemical and biotech corporation. Five years ago, he decided to donate his entire fortune. Sounds like a good guy, right? He’s not.

3. The role originated by Lee Van Cleef will now be played by a woman. The film will introduce us to CIA Deputy Executive Director Roberta Hauk. (The name of Van Cleef’s character was “Robert Hauk”, who was in charge of New York’s maximum security prison.)

4. New York City isn’t a maximum security prison. Weird, right? Because New York being a prison was kind of crucial to the whole “escape from New York” concept. In contrast, in the reboot, New York is breathtakingly lovely. Manhattan is the island we know, but with more towering glass structures and a high, undulating glass wall. The sky is alive with drones as serene as bees, and artificial intelligence controls all in the form of an ethnically ambiguous, cheery young woman called April. A small staff of technicians and researchers known as “Seers” monitor all.

5. The remake doesn’t start in New York City. The beginning of the film, at least, is set in another major city, one not in the United States.

6. The film imagines a world in chaos. Globally, one in every seventy five human begins is now either a refugee, internally displaced, or seeking asylum.

7. A hurricane is coming. It’s called Superstorm Ellery.

8. April’s security won’t be as good as everyone hoped. That will make the whole city vulnerable.

9. Snake has only eleven hours to complete his mission. In the original film, he had 22 hours. Plissken’s mission is to bring in Newton alive.

10. Newton has a failsafe. It’s a mysterious device called Fat Boy — an ominous, dull metal sphere about the size of a car, in a nest of conduits and cabling.

What do you think? Are you ready to give a new Snake Plissken a chance?

Released by Avco Embassy in 1981, the original Escape From New York starred Kurt Russell as the ultimate anti-hero badass, Snake Plissken, the most wanted man in America who is apprehended and then forced to save the president of the United States (played by Carpenter regular Donald Pleasence) after his plane is hijacked by terrorists and crashes in a future Manhattan-turned-maximum security prison. John Carpenter directed the film, which he co-wrote with Nick Castle (who played Michael Myers in Carpenter’s Halloween a few years earlier).

Russell returned as Plissken in Carpenter’s 1996 sequel Escape From L.A.

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