Escape from New York reboot: Wyatt Russell isn’t interested in playing Snake

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

There have been several attempts at getting a reboot of John Carpenter's Escape from New York off the ground, but the last we heard, Leigh Whannell (The Invisible Man) was penning the screenplay with the possibility that he may direct the project as well. The original film took place in the futuristic year of 1997 and found Manhattan having been turned into a giant maximum-security prison. When Air Force One is hijacked by terrorists, the President of the United States makes it to an escape pod which crashes in Manhattan. Desperate to recover him, the government turns to Snake Plissken, who was played by Kurt Russell and whose performance made the character iconic.

A new actor stepping into the boots of Snake Plissken will be a tall order, but fans have called for Kurt Russell's son, Wyatt Russell, to take on the role; However, it's not something the actor is willing to take on. Russell was asked about taking on his father's famous role while speaking with Esquire about The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

Although that’s very kind, that will not be happening. There will be no Snake reboot from me, that’s like career suicide 101. That’s like what not to do. I don’t know if anybody else could be Snake Plissken. Good luck, go get ‘em, I sincerely wish you the best of luck. I just don’t know how it’s possible. And for me, if I really wanted to get people sending me hate mail, I think that’s what I should do. I will not be ever doing anything like that.

There you have it, there will be no Snake Plissken in Wyatt Russell's future. When the latest attempt at the Escape from New York reboot was revealed, it was said that it would be a new vision which would retain elements of the original but bring idea news to the table, which would hopefully help to avoid the "bloated tentpole remake path" that have affected other 1980s reboots such as Robocop and Total Recall. Wyatt Russell can currently be seen playing John Walker in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which will be dropping its final episode this Friday.