Len Wiseman directing Escape From New York remake - official!

While his Die Hard 4.0 might not have been anyone’s idea of the perfect John McClane movie, Len Wiseman certainly guided the DH franchise to a decent box office tally given that it was the fourth instalment and happened years after the other films.

And the director’s work on that has caught the eye of New Line, which has just thrown him an offer to direct the studio’s remake of Escape From New York.

We’re torn – while we’re really not sure anyone needs to remake John Carpenter’s iconic original (when Carpenter himself tried to revisit it with Escape From LA, it turned out about as good as a kick in the giblets) – this new version will boast a script by Black Hawk Down scribe Ken Nolan and the mantle of Snake Plissken will be taken over by 300’s shouting Spartan Gerard Butler. If anyone can handle the role made famous by Kurt Russell, it’s Butler.

Then there’s the story, which, because this is a remake, naturally has to go and explore Plissken’s background while re-tooling the plot of the 1981 original. Slow clap for this one – when Hollywood goes to character’s backgrounds, the result tends to be along the lines of Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. At least they’re keeping a lot of the proper story – Snake is coerced into rescuing the president from his plane that has crashed in Manhattan, now a giant maximum-security prison.

PRODUCTS

The Total Film team are made up of the finest minds in all of film journalism. They are: Editor Jane Crowther, Deputy Editor Matt Maytum, Reviews Ed Matthew Leyland, News Editor Jordan Farley, and Online Editor Emily Murray. Expect exclusive news, reviews, features, and more from the team behind the smarter movie magazine.