Big-time Hollywood producer Joel Silver has a really terrible plan for the classic 80s action flick that includes a Snake Plissken origin story.
Snake Plissken – you may have heard of him. You may have heard he was dead. You may be hearing a lot more about him, too, if Joel Silver gets his way. Silver, who’s been producing films since the late 70s and has a pretty amazing catalog of action flicks to his credit, reportedly wants to expand John Carpenter’s classic Escape From New York into a trilogy, beginning with a Snake Plissken origin story and then presumably moving into a remake of the original film.
This is a terrible idea, not only because Escape From New York is essentially perfect as-is – it works as an action movie, a cheese-fest drinking game and a 98-percent-pure hotshot of the early 80s – but because there is simply no way you can replace the cast. Even if you could find someone to fill the shoes of Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Isaac Hayes, Adrienne Barbeau, Harry Dean Stanton and of course Donald “You Are The Duke of New York” Pleasence, you’re just not going to come up with anyone – anyone – who can step in for Kurt Russell. I mean, this is a guy who makes Rambo look like a sissy, and you’re going to give the role to, who, that guy who played Hawkeye? I know, I know – he’s so dreamy!
And an origin story? Why? Snake is the kind of character who works better when you don’t have all the details – you know he’s done a lot of things and probably most of them were bad, yet there’s a sense of soldier’s honor to him too, even as he’s utterly indifferent to the fate of the world. Why do we need anything more than that? I don’t know what they did to Fresno Bob and I’m happier that way!
There’s still a chance (and probably a likelihood) that this project will fizzle, but Silver appears to have the pull needed to make it happen if he really wants to. Let’s hope he changes his mind.
Source: Badass Digest
