Escape from New York remake: Wyatt Russell will not be Snake Plissken

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Two years have passed since Leigh Whannell signed on to write and possibly direct a remake of the John Carpenter classic Escape from New York (watch it HERE), which starred Kurt Russell as iconic anti-hero Snake Plissken. We haven't heard much about the project since then, because Whannell has been focused on rebooting The Invisible Man and The Wolf Man. Last year, Whannell told us that casting Russell's son Wyatt Russell – who often gets compared to his father – "seems like the obvious thing to win fans over". But now the younger Russell has revealed that he has no interest in replacing his father as Snake.

Wyatt Russell is currently turning in a fantastic performance on the Disney+ Marvel series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, his character earning some strong (and mostly negative) reactions from fans while he tries his best to steal the show out from under the title characters. While shooting a video for Esquire, he was asked if he would play Snake in the new Escape from New York and he replied, 

Although that's very kind of you, 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."

So there goes that idea. Russell's Escape from New York comments come at the end of the video embedded below.

The original Escape from New York had the following synopsis: 

In 1997, a major war between the United States and the Soviet Union is concluding, and the entire island of Manhattan has been converted into a giant maximum security prison. When Air Force One is hijacked and crashes into the island, the president (Donald Pleasence) is taken hostage by a group of inmates. Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell), a former Special Forces soldier turned criminal, is recruited to retrieve the president in exchange for his own freedom.

The remake is being produced by Andrew Rona and Alex Heineman, with Carpenter on board as executive producer.