It was announced last February that SAW and INSIDIOUS co-creator and THE INVISIBLE MAN writer/director Leigh Whannell is attached to write a reboot of John Carpenter's ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. And today the UPGRADE filmmaker updated us on the remake saying that casting Kurt Russell's son Wyatt Russell (OVERLORD) as new Snake Plissken is "the obvious thing to win the fans over."
Specifically, Whannell says:
[Casting Wyatt Russell] seems like the obvious thing to win the fans over.
Whannell is said to be kickstarting the remake with a new vision that will retain elements of the original but bring new ideas to the table. One of his goals is to avoid the path that all but killed other 1980's reboots such as ROBOCOP and TOTAL RECALL.
He adds:
It's funny, I've been so busy working on this film where I haven't had time to circle back around on that project. Sometimes these press releases go out before you're ready, you're like, 'Don't tell the world!' I don't actually know, I really don't. That is an iconic character and I think that Snake Plissken is a part of people's childhood and their adolescence. It's near and dear to them. So I would tread very carefully with that.
Finally, he says:
I feel like a property like that doesn't have the same freedom as maybe something like The Invisible Man does. He has more elasticity as a character because so many people have had their fingerprints on that. There's been TV shows and comic books, whereas with Escape from New York, we're talking about one definitive movie here and you don't want to mess with it. We'll see what happens.
Here's the synopsis of ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK:
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.
Whannell will write the script for the remake of Carpenter's 1980s classic, and while there's currently no deal for him to direct, "the door is open for that possibility." That said, we know Andrew Rona and Alex Heineman are producing with John Carpenter serving as the remake's executive producer.