John Carpenter is a prolific American director responsible for a number of classics including Halloween, Big Trouble in Little China, The Thing, and They Live, among many others.
Because he’s been so successful, studios have been remaking his movies for years. For well over a decade, there’s been talk of a reboot of 1981’s seminal Escape From New York, which stars Kurt Russell as the iconic Snake Plissken, tasked with rescuing the President of the United States.
In an interview with ComicBook, Carpenter revealed that he’s not involved with the reboot, after being asked if there were any legitimate talks about it.
“Nothing that Kurt and I do is legitimate. It’s all illegitimate. No, not seriously [discussed a sequel]. No. I know that there’s a couple guys over at 20th Century Fox who are working on a reboot of this whole thing, and they’ve got a director, I’m not sure who it is, but maybe you know.”
So far there’s nothing concrete, but rumors of a remake have been floating around Hollywood for years. with Leigh Whannell the latest in a long line of names to circle the project. Carpenter said he’s not opposed to coming back, just as he did with the Halloween movies more than 40 years after being involved with the first one.
“Yeah, if you have a monetary figure involved. Sure, absolutely.”
Russell is 70 and almost certainly won’t be donning the eye patch whenever the remake comes together, but some fans think his son Wyatt should inherit the mantle. However, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier star has already ruled himself out of committing career suicide, but Carpenter did stress that it would be a family matter first and foremost.
“He’s really good, Wyatt is really good, but it’s up to him and up to Kurt. I don’t know what they’re going to do. They may even go for a female There’s nobody like Kurt, and there’s nobody like Snake, male or female.”
Having been in the works since the mid-2000s, the most pressing issue surrounding the Escape from New York remake is dragging it out of development hell, then we can worry about casting.