Cast This: Snake Plissken (Escape from New York remake)

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

An update of John Carpenter's ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK has been threatened several times over the course of a decade, initially with Gerard Butler planning to wear the eye-patch as iconic badass Snake Plissken. Directors like Len Wiseman, Brett Ratner and Breck Eisner briefly sat in the director's chair before departing.

Those early attempts ultimately crashed like Donald Pleasance's plane, but the project continued trudging through development hell (with even talk of a new trilogy at one point). Late last year we learned that the remake was considering actually ditching the Manhattan prison concept in favor of sending Snake on a mission into a futuristic New York conceived a technological wonderland.

The latest rumor is that filmmaker Robert Rodriguez may be taking over the project (once he finishes up ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL), with John Carpenter himself executive producing. Considering Rodriguez prefers to do almost every job on his movies himself, this presumably also means that the remake would be getting a new script as well.

However you feel about Rodriguez's potential involvement, one thing seems certain: at some point we're getting a new Snake Plissken. As much as we'd all probably prefer Kurt Russell to return to the role in a direct sequel, it's more likely that we'll see the real Manhattan walled-off and filled with convicts before that happens.

As any genre fan knows, the character of S.D. "Bob" Plissken (call him "Snake") first appeared in Carpenter's 1981 classic, portrayed with unforgettable attitude by Kurt Russell.  A decorated military veteran turned criminal, Snake is offered a deal to exchange his incarceration for a trip into the maximum-security penitentiary of New York City to rescue the President, and is given a deadline that will blow open his arteries if he fails.

Russell reunited with Carpenter and returned as the one-eyed anti-hero for the 1996 sequel ESCAPE FROM L.A., which sent Snake into the post-quake island prison of Los Angeles to recover the President's daughter. This task inexplicably involved basketball, surfing, hang gliding, and eventually shutting down all technology on the planet.

After that, Snake also appeared in several comic book stories and nearly resurfaced in several other formats, including the proposed movie sequel ESCAPE FROM EARTH, a planned TV series, an original anime movie, and a canceled video game that would have incorporated stealth, finishing moves and MAX PAYNE-style slo-mo action.

A number of actors have been attached or rumored for an ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK reboot over the years, including Jeremy Renner, Josh Brolin and Charlie Hunnam. But there's one actor who already proved he can do an admirable job taking over a fan-favorite character: Tom Hardy. Another guy who knows his way around genre material and gives great gruff is Karl Urban (who also doesn't mind obscuring part of his face). The new Snake needs to be tough, and they don't come much tougher-looking than Jon Bernthal.

Let us know below who you would want to escape from New York as the new Snake Plissken!

For the previous Cast This column for Commander Shepard in a movie based on the MASS EFFECT videogame trilogy, suggestions for male Shepard were:

1. Ed Skrein  2. Wentworth Miller  3. Joe Manganiello

And suggestions for female Shepard:

1. Emily Blunt  2. Jane Levy  3. Hayley Atwell