Saturday, August 30, 2014

Hunnam, Bernthal & Stevens Vie For "New York" Reboot Lead

Sons of Anarchy and Pacific Rim star Charlie Hunnam former "The Walking Dead" co-star Jon Bernthal and  former Downton Abbey star Dan Stevens are the latest names rumored to take the role of Snake Plissken in the "remake director John Carpenter's 1981 classic Escape from New York says Starlog. Hunnam is favored by the studio suits.


The original movie  saw hard ass anti-hero Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) living in a near future totalitarian United States where Manhattan Island has been turned into a maximum security prison and Plissken has one day to rescue the U.S. President (Donald Pleasance) who is being held hostage there.

Gerard Butler, Timothy Olyphant, Jason Statham and Tom Hardy have all been linked to play Russell's iconic role at various points in time over the years for  New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. with Len Wiseman and Breck Eisner attached to direct along the way. The studios let their option expire a number of years ago. The film rights now reside at Sudio Canal

Starlog also says the new film will be less focused on one man and more an ensemble flick. It will retain the central premise of the original:

"[It's] more team-based, as Snake Plissken traverses through a treacherous New York landscape with a rogues gallery of criminals who look to leave the island-turned-prison in exchange for the rescue of the captured U.S. President."

They say earlier drafts of the the script had a team-dynamic to it, but subsequent re-writes have turned several of the supporting characters into co-leads. Some are familiar, some are new:

"Plissken’s team consists of Mina, a warzone journalist framed for murder and living in the shadows of New York as a scavenger; Cabbie, a schizophrenic travel guide who serves as comic relief; Gareth, the last surviving member of the President’s security detail who harbors a dangerous secret; and The Brain, Plissken’s former partner-in-crime who left him to die after a botched robbery."

The last we heard was that producers Joel Silver and Andrew Rona saw the new pic as part of a new trilogy which would begin with an origin tale. This report sounds like that notion could go either way--depending on the film's success

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