"Escape From New York" remake alive again

This is one of those projects that have been doing the rounds in development for ages now. And despite earlier attempts – with the likes of Gerard butler signing up to play Snake Plisskin – it seemed doomed to dwell in that limbo zone, a place most fans of the original would probably wish it could stay.

But spurred on by Loeb’s recent rewrite – which has apparently nailed legendary, Kurt Russell-shaped antihero Plisskin’s sardonic humour and found a decent outlet for it in switching the gender of the person he has to find in a future Manhattan transformed into a penal colony from a male president to a female senator – the company is now back on the hunt for a star and director.

Also fresh to the film is the approach to that villain-infested vision of New York. Vulture blog reports that a previous screenwriter, David Kajganich, posited the idea of an intact Manhattan island that has simply been turned into a prison, not destroyed then converted. It’s cheaper to shoot that way, y’see. “It is not a disaster movie,” says the blog’s source. “It is an exposé of an ecosystem, if you put a huge wall around Manhattan and then dropped in the most f****d-up, dangerous criminals on Earth.”

Oh, and while we completely empathise with all worries about trying to reboot Carpenter’s classic, at least, he’s set down some strict rules for anyone attempting to fashion a new Snake – they must retain the name, the eye patch and the badass attitude. There goes our big idea to have him get dewey-eyed over a sexy vampire to attract the tween crowd!

/Empire Online/