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Writer Allan Loeb Reignites the Escape from New York Remake

by Ethan Anderton
February 10, 2010
Source: Vulture

Back in 2007, you might remember hearing about an Escape from New York remake with Gerard Butler playing Snake Plissken and Len Wiseman set to direct. Then some cages were rattled when rumors of Brett Ratner taking over the production started swirling until he later denied any involvement, then suddenly Butler dropped from the film due to "creative differences." Now a creative difference has given new life to the remake as Vulture reports that writer Allan Loeb (who saved Wall Street 2 from development hell) has written a script that not only is loyal to Snake Plissken as a hard-ass, but to studios for making it cheaper.

Essentially two tasks were found to be the most difficult in getting the remake made. It seemed no one could write for Snake Plissken without making it all hokey and campy, and the prospect of turning Manhattan into a giant prison was expensive. So they brought on Loeb to rewrite the script and he was what they needed.

"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."

Rather than making Manhattan look completely destroyed and desolate, Loeb took a route similar to I Am Legend's treatment of NYC and simply evacuated it due to the fallout of a crude radioactive dirty bomb on the outskirts of the city. Now Snake (who has yet to be cast) will be dropped into a city that is intact, but has been turned into a huge prison (still run out of The Statue of Liberty, but this time by a security company). One of the film's insiders said, "it is not a disaster movie. 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."

But this seems like a reasonably easy fix in the script as opposed to the hilarious contractual obligations New Line had to agree to from John Carpenter. In the contract, the character, originally portrayed by Kurt Russell, had to meet the stipulations to only be called Snake, always wear an eye patch, and, no joke, "always be a 'bad-ass." Fortunately, it sounds like Loeb came through on the bad-ass part of the script. As unnecessary as this remake is (Carpenter's film is still solid as a rock) maybe Loeb will do it justice. Now if only New Line can find a director to do the same, and more importantly, find someone as hardcore as Kurt Russell to step into Snake Plissken's boots.So who's bad-ass enough to be the new Snake Plissken?

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