A potential remake of John Carpenter’s dystopian sci-fi classic Escape From New York that we’ve been ignoring has died, according to Deadline, who reports that New Line and Warner Bros. have allowed their option to lapse after numerous false starts. The project had been kicking around for years, with various directors, scripts, and stars attached: Most recently producer Neal Moritz and The Crazies’ Breck Eisner were working on a draft, while rumors swirled that Gerard Butler, then Jeremy Renner, then Tom Hardy were all being courted to take on the thankless task of inheriting from Kurt Russell one of the most iconic characters in action-movie history. Anyway, their collective unwillingness has caused the reboot to wither, although there’s still the possibility that someone else could step in and try again—but only after getting a blessing from Carpenter, who drafted a contract last year stipulating that any new Snake Plissken had to both wear an eye-patch and “always be a badass.” And the best way to ensure those things, of course, is to not have any new Snake Plissken at all.
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