New line has been trying to get a new take on John Carpenter’s cult classic Escape From New York out of development limbo for years now. Nothing has come of it yet, but Breck Eisner thinks he can change all that.
New Line nabbed the rights back in March 2007, slotting Gerard Butler in to play Snake Plisskin (the antihero vigilante made iconic by Kurt Russell) and hiring Ken Nolan to write a draft of the script. But it lingered for months and never quite seemed to gain traction.
Since then, it’s been through several writers and directors (including Jonathan Mostow, Allan Loeb and Len Wiseman), and now Eisner – who last brought us another remake in The Crazies – has jumped aboard.
According to the Heat Vision Blog, he’s planning to make Loeb’s version of the screenplay, which apparently blends a back-story with the rough futuristic plot of the original, which sees a criminal dropped into a maximum security prison (basically Manhattan) to rescue the US president from a downed plane.
Will Eisner be the man to get it to the screen? Who knows – but first, he’ll need a Snake…