New Line snagged the remake of Escape from New York starring Gerard Butler as Snake Plissken. That may be just as effective a career move as Halle Berry made with Catwoman. This remake train that Hollywood has been on is really starting to annoy me. It takes the fun out of a perfectly good bad movie. Yes, in my world there is such a thing as “a good bad movie”.
Alexander Aja did a remake of The Hills Have Eyes last year and is now on board for a remake of Pirhanna. Scanners is in the remake line up. Earlier this year we had a remake of The Hitcher, which was released shortly after the remake of Black Christmas. There were also remakes of The Amityville Horror and The Omen. Wasn’t there a remake of The Fog starring Shannon from Lost?
Psycho. . . Texas Chainsaw Massacre. . . Rob Zombie’s Halloween. . . when is someone doing a remake of Tremors?
Have writers and filmmakers run out of ideas for scaring people? The only time a movie needs a remake was when the original idea was good, but the execution was bad.
I liked Escape from New York. It was campy and not meant to be taken seriously. The remake will have Snake’s origin story merged with the events of the movie, so no doubt we’ll learn how he got his tattoo, eye patch and bad attitude.
Snake Plissken is a twerp because he can be a twerp. Some people don’t need an abusive childhood or cheating spouse to to turn them sour. Some people are just naturally jerks.
Please don’t make Snake a victim. . . please don’t turn him into Darth Vader.
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Lisa Fary's earliest influences are Princess Leia, Rainbow Bright, Astronaut Barbie, and her 6th grade teacher, Ms. Palmer. She's angry that it's 2011 and she still doesn't have a hovercraft, but will accept a jetpack as consolation. That jetpack had better be pink with a rhinestone monogram. 
I agree completely – hell, Kurt Russel and John Carpenter could still manage a sequel. Well, Carpenter might want to hire a more forward thinking AD and cinematographer – but it can be done!
At any rate, this remake craze is frustrating. “Rebooting” a damaged franchise is reasonable but what’s going on lately is just lazy film making coupled frightened investors.
If the remakes were better than the originals, that would be one thing, but they’re not. Mostly, the hair is better and it’s bloodier, like The Hitcher.
I can’t help but think that if they can do a remake that’s better then the original then they could probably do an equally good film of an original story.
Whatever happened to the talk of an “Escape from Earth” sequel with Carpenter and Russell? Shelved in favor of this remake? Boo, hiss.
Looks like New Line’s won the auction for the rights to produce it. Carpenter’s looking forward to having someone new don the black eyepatch, though, so it might be worthwhile to reserve judgement.
At the same time I would much rather them just use an original freaking IP rather then strip-mining the 80′s.