One of the great – and oldest – revolving doors in Hollywood has belonged to 20th Century Fox’s long-gestating Escape From New York remake. In the 8 years that the project has spent languishing in development hell, numerous actors, directors and writers have exited the modern take when it showed little signs of progress.
Having picked up the rights from StudioCanal earlier in the year, Fox is beginning to show renewed interest in the dormant reboot, with The Hollywood Reporter today bringing word that Neil Cross has enlisted to pen the script. Best known for his work across Luther and Doctor Who, Cross’s addition is the first positive sign to come out of the studio’s project for some time, and it’s understood that Fox is hoping to jump-start Escape From New York in a similar vein to its now-established Planet of the Apes franchise.
According to the outlet, Cross will largely be taking the concept for the remake back to the drawing board, merely cherry-picking the best elements found in past scripts by Gary Whitta (Book of Eli) and Ken Nolan (Black Hawk Down), who both left the flailing feature shortly after their contribution. Said to be adopting a similar back-to-basics approach as Rocksteady’s revered Arkham series, producer Joel Silver was quoted in 2014 stating that:
There was a video game that came out a few years ago called Arkham City, which shows how when Gotham became this kind of walled prison. And they never deal with that in the story of Escape from New York, so part of our idea was to kind of 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.
John Carpenter, director of the 1981 original, is attached to executive produce 20th Century Fox’s modern take on Escape From New York, though it’ll be some time yet before we see any tangible signs of Cross’ work.