With the news this week that New Line Cinema is remaking John Carpenter‘s Escape From New York with 300 star Gerard Butler in the role of Snake Plissken, what does the original Snake Kurt Russell have to say?
In this interview with Entertainment Weekly, the 56-year-old action hero said, “People come up to me and say, ‘You played Snake Plissken.’ I didn’t play Snake Plissken,” says Russell, “I created him!”
Russell winced at the idea that a Scottish actor would be playing Snake, saying “I do think that character was quintessentially one thing. And that is, American.” When asked if he’d consider a cameo appearance in the remake, the actor replied, “F— that! I am Snake Plissken!”
John Carpenter will serve as an executive producer for the new movie with Neal Moritz producing. Ken Nolan (Black Hawk Down) will write the script, which will be part prequel and part remake combining a Plissken origin story with the 1981 original movie.
In the 1981 cult classic that takes place in a futuristic 1997, the President of the United States crash lands in the maximum-security prison colony of Manhattan after terrorists hijack Air Force One. Russell’s convicted bank robber Plissken has 22 hours to find an important cassette tape and rescue the President before an explosive implanted in him is detonated.
Russell reprised his eye-patch-wearing role in the 1996 sequel Escape from L.A.
