In March 2013, news arrived that the rights to John Carpenter and Kurt Russell's action classic Escape From New York had reverted to StudioCanal and Joel Silver, and the plan was to make it a trilogy centring on Snake's backstory. Now, speaking to Collider on the Non-Stop press tour, Silver has a few more details, though he's keen to point out that everything is in very early stages.
“There was a videogame that came out a few years ago called Arkham City, which shows how Gotham became this walled prison," says Silver. "And they never deal with that in the story of Escape From New York, so part of our idea was to see how the city became this walled prison and how the Snake Plissken character was a hero and how he became not looked at as a hero."
Immediate reaction: we can't wait for a Escape From New York / Arkham City crossover game, with Snake taking out goons in an altogether un-Batlike way. But the question remains: do we need to know about how city became a prison?
"And then, in the middle of the story, would be the movie that we previously saw about the President’s daughter goes down, [and] he has to go in and get her," Silver continues. "And then they did a sequel, Escape from L.A., but I would like to then find a way to have New York go back to a place that we’d like to see what it is today.”
It would take several miracles to get this all to work, with getting the right Snake, the right director and right script all seemingly impossible tasks. Gerard Butler and Jeremy Renner have both declined offers to slip on the eyepatch, so any suggestions as to who might make a good young Plissken would be warmly welcomed in the comment box below.