Butler has 'Escape' plan
'300' star heads to 'New York'
Source: Variety
Hot off the socko bow of "300" this past weekend, star Gerard Butler is at the center of a package that CAA began shopping Monday for a remake of John Carpenter's 1981 actioner "Escape From New York."
Neal Moritz is attached to produce, with "Black Hawk Down" scribe Ken Nolan penning the screenplay.
Several studios are battling for the pic, mostly because the $70 million launch of "300" signaled the arrival of an emerging action star in Butler. A deal is expected to be made this week.
Butler would play Snake Plissken, the one-eyed convict who's charged with heading into the inescapable maximum security prison formerly known as Manhattan to liberate the U.S. president.
Kurt Russell originated the role and reprised it in the 1996 sequel "Escape to L.A."
Kurt Blasts Escape Remake
The original Snake Plissken ain't happy.
The news that New Line Cinema is remaking Escape From New York -- and have cast 300's Gerard Butler as Snake Plissken -- hasn't exactly met with universal approval from many fans of the original film. And one of those fans is the man who starred in it, Kurt Russell.
Russell fumed about the remake to Entertainment Weekly, especially the casting of a Scottish actor to succeed him as one-eyed badass Snake Plissken. "I will say that when I was told who was going to play Snake Plissken, my initial reaction was ''Oh, man!'' [Russell winces]. I do think that character was quintessentially one thing. And that is, American," the actor advised EW.com.
To Russell, his Escape From New York anti-hero wasn't just any other role. "People come up to me and say, ''You played Snake Plissken.'' I didn't play Snake Plissken, I created him!"
He is also adamantly against the idea of making a cameo or playing any other role in it. "(Expletive) that! I am Snake Plissken! It's like Sean Connery always watching someone else do their version of Bond. I think one of the things, for instance, about Escape From New York that appealed to me was that it wasn't a special effects extravaganza. It's a quiet, dark world and it revolved around watching the behavior of this one guy. He's a fascinating character. In fact, he's the most complex character I've ever played."
Snake Plissken: The Early Years
Producer confirms Escape will be a prequel.
Exec producer John Carpenter, who directed the 1981 original, recently speculated that New Line Cinema's planned retelling of Escape From New York may be more of a prequel than a flat-out remake. Now the project's producer, Neal Moritz, has confirmed that approach.
In a brief interview in the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly, Moritz says the new Escape will recount "how Snake became Snake," adding that the story -- to be scripted by Black Hawk Down's Ken Nolan -- will be "almost an origin story."
So there you have it. Snake Plissken, the film's one-eyed badass anti-hero, will be getting the "how he came to be" treatment, a la Batman Begins and Casino Royale.
Will that mean audiences will see Snake's military service, how he lost his eye and became an outlaw? Can fans expect to see Snake, Brain and Fresno Bob raising hell together?
Ironically, IGN offered up it's own suggestions on how to reboot the Escape From New York franchise back in January -- weeks before the news broke -- and we said it should focus on Snake's back-story.
300's Gerard Butler will play Snake, stepping into the thigh-high boots last worn by Kurt Russell, who has gone on record about how unhappy he is with the new Escape.
A prequel to a movie set in the post-apocalyptic world of 1997, hmm?
So Snake's going to listen to a lot of grunge and Reservoir Dogs will be his favorite movie, I guess.
Escape From Brett Ratner
Wiseman leaves New York, ditches Gears of War?
Brett Ratner (X-Men: The Last Stand) has reportedly replaced Len Wiseman (Live Free or Die Hard) as the director of New Line's Escape From New York remake.
Ain't It Cool News first reported a rumor that Wiseman had jumped ship and that the studio's choice to replace him at the helm was Ratner. IESB.net contacted a source at New Line who confirmed Wiseman's departure.
The site also claims that Wiseman won't be directing New Line's Gears of War movie either, as had been previously reported. "New Line Cinema will most likely not move forward with (Gears of War) at all. Our source is saying that the studio has concerns with ballooning budget of the film," according to IESB
Oh sweet. Now Christ Tucker can play The Duke of New York!!!
Quote from: just sparrow on March 24, 2007, 07:23:40 AM
A prequel to a movie set in the post-apocalyptic world of 1997, hmm?
So Snake's going to listen to a lot of grunge and Reservoir Dogs will be his favorite movie, I guess.
That's funny.
Escape from New York is one of my faves. As you can see here, (http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=7674.msg187938#msg187938) here, (http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=8560.msg217165#msg217165) and here. (http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=3378.msg226373#msg226373) So the prospect of Ratner directing the prequel is really bum news for me. I hope something shiny distracts Ratner away from the project. That kind of seems likely too.
RATNER UNINTERESTED IN WISEMAN'S SLOPPY PLISSKEN SECONDS
Source: CHUD
The very idea of an Escape from New York remake is anything but good news, but since it is going to happen, the least we can hope for is that it either receives an imaginative overhaul (not bloody likely with Ken Nolan's ho-hum draft) or bombs quietly like Rupert Wainwright's The Fog.
The latter suddenly seems a distinct possibility now that Brett Ratner has, allegedly, abandoned the project. This info arrives courtesy of AICN, which received a missive from a longtime scooper who spoke with the Rush Hour 3 maestro at the Savannah Film Festival (where he was receiving an "Achievement in Film" award!). According to Ratner, the project is still alive, but, alas, he has moved on. To what, I have no idea. The Hugh Hefner biopic? The William Stadiem-scripted Mr. S: My Life with Frank Sinatra (with Chris Tucker starring as The Chairman's valet, George Jacobs)? A whore stacking contest with Robert Evans?
Escape from New York is a priority project for New Line (which desperately needs a franchise infusion), so Option C (i.e. Les Mayfield) should be announced any day now.
Butler escapes 'New York' remake
Actor exits film due to creative differences
Source: Variety
Before they shot a frame of film, Gerard Butler escaped "Escape From New York," the remake of the John Carpenter film.
Right after his turn as the Spartan in "300," Butler made a deal to play Snake Plissken in a film bought at auction by New Line. He left for creative differences. New Line is persevering: studio has brought Jonathan Mostow in to rewrite, with an option to direct.
Butler just began production on Lakeshore's "Game," which Lionsgate will distribute. He'll next be seen starring in the Richard LaGravanese-directed "P.S., I Love You," the Guy Ritchie-directed "Rock N Rolla," and Fox-Walden's "Nim's Island."
They should do another Vs. movie instead and leave Snake alone. This thing is already falling apart.
My roommate by the way just purchased and hung up an Escape from LA poster. Yes.
Quote from: MacGuffin on March 22, 2007, 12:51:57 PM
Kurt Blasts Escape Remake
The original Snake Plissken ain't happy.
To Russell, his Escape From New York anti-hero wasn't just any other role. "People come up to me and say, ''You played Snake Plissken.'' I didn't play Snake Plissken, I created him!"
He is also adamantly against the idea of making a cameo or playing any other role in it. "(Expletive) that! I am Snake Plissken! It's like Sean Connery always watching someone else do their version of Bond. I think one of the things, for instance, about Escape From New York that appealed to me was that it wasn't a special effects extravaganza. It's a quiet, dark world and it revolved around watching the behavior of this one guy."
i know remakes are annoying but damn, russell sounds like an asshole. who cares if they remake this one anyway. both escapes are white trash b-movie shit.
Quote from: Kurt Russell
"He's a fascinating character. In fact, he's the most complex character I've ever played.
what about the capt'n?
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.barnesandnoble.com%2Fimages%2F9260000%2F9269174.jpg&hash=fac4ab1576f547d9c501c82e67e37fcd3a38b481)
Exclusive Details on the Escape From New York Remake: Different Big Apple, Same Eye Patch
Source: NYMag
New Line Cinema is quickly moving forward with plans to remake John Carpenter's 1981 dystopian action classic Escape From New York, thanks to a rewrite from Allan Loeb, the man who rescued the Wall Street sequel from development limbo over at Fox. A big reason for the fast track was creative: Loeb nailed the humor in Plissken without slipping into camp, and he changed Snake's rescue-mission target from a president to a female senator, thereby upping the banter quotient. But just as big a factor was economic: They found a much cheaper way to turn Manhattan into a giant prison.
In the original, set at the end of World War III, New York City was a husk of itself after being turned into a giant prison, but that kind of destruction gets pricey.* So in Escape 2.0, the Big Apple that the as-yet-uncast Snake Plissken is dropped into will be geographically undesirable, but intact: This Manhattan was evacuated and turned into a privately run penal colony after the detonation of a crude radioactive dirty bomb on the outskirts of the city. "It is not a disaster movie," says a source close to the project. "It is an exposé of an ecosystem, if you put a huge wall around Manhattan and then dropped in the most fucked-up, dangerous criminals on Earth." This means New York will still be recognizable to audiences, à la I Am Legend, rather than an entirely new Armageddon Island. (Previous scribe David Kajganich, who wrote The Invasion, is credited with this solution.)
Much like in the original movie, the authorities have set up shop in the Statue of Liberty (though this time it's not the police, it's a private, KBR-like security company)*, and now new prisoners are being processed through Ellis Island. And more importantly, good ol' Snake remains largely the same. Legally, he has to be. We learned that in order to land the rights, New Line had to sign a contract with John Carpenter stipulating, among other things, that Plissken "must be called 'Snake'"; "must wear an eye patch"; and that he would — and we're not making this up — "always be a 'bad-ass.'"; So, if you ever catch the new Snake watching Grey's Anatomy or complaining that the senator isn't "emotionally available," just know that somewhere, some poor development exec is about to be carted off to jail.
*These parts have been updated since posting.
Normally I'm relatively pro-remake, probably because I'm quite attached to theatre and it's a matter of course that the same plays are done again and again, often with great results...
BUT THIS IS FUCKING BLASPHEMY. As the man himself said, Kurt Russell IS Snake Plissken. This is one piece of artistic property that they cannot possibly add to, which means that they can only subtract. At least there's a contract to state that Snake must always be a bad-ass, but that neglects that there is a very precarious degree of bad-assness that Kurt Russell pulls off in the film. If they somehow try to make him more bad-ass, which they probably will, he'll just be a jerk.
Fortunately (and this is another reason that I'm generally not anti-remake), we will always have the original film, which we can watch any time we damn well please.
I think my problem with remakes is even simpler: they always sound so dumb the way they're written about in these hype articles.
my problem with remakes is even simpler than that: they suck.
Quote from: ρ on February 10, 2010, 11:02:30 PM
my problem with remakes is even simpler than that: they suck.
exactly. if they actually worked hard on making a film as good as the original perhaps it wouldn't be so bad. i mean, nobody gives a shit about nolan and batman because he brought a fresh new concept and made a fantastic film. most remakes or reboots are bullshit and have horrible scripts and are essentially really bad updates of good films.
They suck in film because they are nearly always done for bad reasons by studios to appeal to the lowest common denominator, but I don't think they suck in principle. When the same motivation of mass appeal is applied to an original screenplay, the results are just as bad. It has nothing to do with whether or not it's been done before.
A lot of the most original thinking that I've encountered has been in a new production of some older play, because the people who've produced it are often motivated by some new perspective that they can bring to it. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. When it works, it's poetry, and sometimes your previous experience of this story actually adds to the poetry of the new production.
In most studio film productions, they apply the same old tired perspective of whatever made money last time to whatever they're making now, whether it's an original screenplay or an adaptation of a book/videogame/tv show or whether it's a remake of another movie.
I think the perspective matters more than whether or not these characters have been brought to the screen before. Besides, there's nothing original about most original screenplays, anyway. I like good stories, but I can be riveted by a story that I've heard before if there's something exciting about the perspective.
In the case of Hollywood remaking stuff like Escape From New York, what you're getting is a tired perspective laid over a story with characters that we've seen in a movie before; that's the worst of all worlds, and as such, the newer one will feel less fresh than the old one. The movie's being made for stale reasons; it will be a stale movie. But whatever, it'll make money and that's their job, I guess.
Also, I thought New Line Cinema was dead.
New Line plans 'Escape' with Breck Eisner
Director in talks for remake of John Carpenter pic
Source: Variety
Breck Eisner is in talks to direct New Line's remake of "Escape From New York," set up with Neal H. Moritz's Original Films.
Eisner directed Overture's remake of "The Crazies" and "Sahara."
New Line has been developing the revamp of John Carpenter's 1981 original for several years. Gerard Butler had been attached to star as Snake Plissken in 2007, but left over creative differences.
Original sci-fi actioner, starring Kurt Russell, was directed by John Carpenter from a screenplay he co-wrote with Nick Castle. Pic follows antihero Plissken as he tries to save the President in gang-ruled Manhattan.
New Line dropping 'Escape From New York'
Source: Deadline
EXCLUSIVE: If eye patch-wearing antihero Snake Plissken is going to slither in a reboot, it won't be at New Line and Warner Bros. They've allowed the option to drop on a remake they've been developing, meaning that the reboot of the John Carpenter-directed 1981 classic is up for grabs. The original starred Kurt Russell as Snake, a tough convict dropped into a futuristic New York that has been turned into a post-apocalyptic maximum security prison. He's charged with rescuing the president (Donald Pleasence), who is held hostage by the prison kingpin (Isaac Hayes) after his plane within the city walls. Snake's offered a pardon if he's successful, but fitted with a lethal device that will kill him if he tries to run or misses the deadline. New Line and producer Neal Moritz have been working on the reboot, most recently with The Crazies helmer Breck Eisner attached to direct, and a script by writers that include Allan Loeb and X-Men: First Class scribe Jamie Moss. There have been rumors of interest from Gerard Butler and Jeremy Renner. Those guys were never confirmed and more recently there was word the studio courted Tom Hardy, whose work in Inception, Warrior and the upcoming The Dark Knight Rises has made him a go-to guy for tough man work. Eisner and Moritz are also working on Flash Gordon, and Eisner also is attached to The Last Witch Hunter at Summit.
Good.
Why can't they just let Carpenter make Escape From Earth already?
As for sequels/remakes, I actually liked Escape From LA better than NY. As a storyline it's a pretty lame/retarded copy of NY, but as a film (taking all aspect of the art of cinema into account) it's on an entirely different level than the first one. It's almost as if it was deliberately made as a different version of the first film, with its own set of messages and aspirations. It isn't (just) a (great) action movie, it's pure satire. A beautiful metaphor for western civilization in general and Los Angeles in particular. It's pretty ingenious; you get this character who is forced into believing he's about to die for no purpose whatsoever (this pretty much pisses him off pretty bad of course). Then he gets confronted with the LA lifestyle in all its facets. And being in the situation that he's in, the absurdity and tediousness of that society gets pushed to herculean proportions. It's almost Fellini-like in how grotesque and evil and funny it all is.
I think LA is much clearer than NY in showing how much Snake's character hates everything and is angry ALL the time and really wants to escape from humanity itself.
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."
He didn't say any more, but we've always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought — frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.
And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I don't care what it's founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction — Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the "creative temperament."— it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No — Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.
My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle Western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that we're descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather's brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War, and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on to-day.
I never saw this great-uncle, but I'm supposed to look like him — with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in father's office I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm centre of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe — so I decided to go East and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep school for me, and finally said, "Why — ye — es," with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year, and after various delays I came East, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.
And now we know why you your name.
we already knew (http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=4994.msg257450#msg257450)
Joel Silver, Studio Canal To Reboot John Carpenter's 'Escape From New York'
By MIKE FLEMING JR | Deadline
EXCLUSIVE: Joel Silver's Silver Pictures has joined forces with Studio Canal to build a new franchise with a retelling of Escape From New York. The 1981 John Carpenter original starred Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken, a tough convict dropped into a futuristic New York that has been turned into a post-apocalyptic maximum security prison. He's charged with rescuing the president (Donald Pleasence), who is held hostage by the prison kingpin (Isaac Hayes) after his plane crashes within the city walls. Snake's offered a pardon if he's successful, but fitted with a lethal device that will kill him if he tries to run or misses the deadline.
A remake had been attempted not that long ago at New Line with producer Neil Moritz and The Crazies helmer Breck Eisner, with Gerard Butler, Jeremy Renner and Tom Hardy all mentioned as potentials to play Plissken. That effort ended when New Line let the option lapse almost two years ago.
Studio Canal, which partnered with Silver on the Liam Neeson action films Unknown and Non-Stop and the upcoming Sean Penn-starrer Prone Gunman, has entrusted Silver with the rights. Silver is planning an entirely new take on the material. The goal is to turn it into a trilogy, starting with an origin story in a fashion similar to the way Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes restarted that franchise. Studio Canal will finance development of the project before placing it with a studio. A writer search is underway.
Silver and Silver Production Prexy Andrew Rona will produce. Silver's EVP Alex Heineman will be executive producer. As for a new Snake, either Butler, Renner, Hardy or Neeson would hit the mark as the one-eyed tough guy.
They already rebooted Escape From New York. It was called Lockout, it starred Guy Pearce, it was set in a space prison, and it was terrible.