‘Escape from New York’ eyes up Wyatt Russell to star
Australian filmmaker Leigh Whannell is busy promoting his work on revamped horror film The Invisible Man, and is now beginning to turn his attention to his next project, a remake of the cult classic Escape from New York and he’s looking at Kurt Russell’s own son, rising action star Wyatt Russell, to star as infamous anti-hero Snake Plissken.
MovieWeb reported on this potential new casting and you’ve got to admit that there’s a real meta nature to it. Of his desire to cast the younger Russell in the film, who first showed he had some serious action talents with WWII horror-thriller Overlord, and whom is progressing into more thrilling roles with the likes of The Woman in the Window and The Falcon and the Winter Solider for Disney+, Whannell commented saying “[Casting Wyatt Russell] seems like the obvious thing to win the fans over.”
Whannell further elaborated on his work on the film saying, “it’s funny, I’ve been so busy working on this film where I haven’t had time to circle back around on that project. Sometimes these press releases go out before you’re ready, you’re like, ‘Don’t tell the world!’ I don’t actually know, I really don’t. That is an iconic character and I think that Snake Plissken is a part of people’s childhood and their adolescence. It’s near and dear to them. So I would tread very carefully with that. I feel like a property like that doesn’t have the same freedom as maybe something like The Invisible Man does. He has more elasticity as a character because so many people have had their fingerprints on that. There’s been TV shows and comic books, whereas with Escape from New York, we’re talking about one definitive movie here and you don’t want to mess with it. We’ll see what happens.”
Previous actors who have been linked to the role of Snake Plissken have included Gerard Butler and Jeremy Renner, while actors including Charlie Hunnam, Jon Bernthal and Dan Stevens have also been considered for role in the past.
Kurt Russell himself has been noted as saying that any potential remake needs to stay true to the original spirit of the character whom he described as being ‘distinctly American”.
I honestly don’t know where I sit with the idea of a remake of Escape from New York as the original film is a near perfect piece of cult action cinema and I wouldn’t want to see it messed with. However, Whannell has proven himself to be an innovative filmmaker, so who knows maybe we’d get something interesting with a remake at his hands.
We’re a long way from any kind of serious announcement here so we’ll just have to wait and see where it all goes.
Source: MovieWeb
