The one movie Kurt Russell refuses to star in: “Fuck that”
In the early 2000s, rumblings of a reboot of an iconic action movie from the ’80s began doing the rounds in Hollywood. Over the next 20+ years, this proposed remake cycled through a list of directors and potential stars as everyone tried to crack the thing that would make it new and exciting instead of just another redo. As these creatives toiled away, though, the film’s original star mostly stayed out of it, until he was asked if he’d consider returning in a unique way – and let’s just say, the legend that is Kurt Russell had a colourful response.
In truth, Russell created an action icon for the ages when he played the eye-patch-wearing badass Snake Plissken in 1981’s Escape From New York. The John Carpenter-directed future sci-fi made $50 million at the box office on a budget of $6million, so for years afterwards, the return of Plissken seemed like an inevitability. He finally graced the big screen again in 1996’s Escape From LA, but something wasn’t quite right. Perhaps they had waited too long to finally make the film, or maybe Plissken seemed out of place in the movie landscape of the ’90s. Whatever the case, the film conspired to make less money than New York did 15 years earlier, on a budget more than eight times bigger.
It seemed like Plissken was destined to remain a figure of the past. But then a generation of Hollywood writers, directors, and actors entered the business, all worshipping at the altar of Carpenter and Russell’s creation. In 2007, it was announced that Scottish man of action Gerard Butler, then fresh off a star-making turn in 300, had signed up to play Plissken in a reboot. Fan reaction was mixed, to say the least, and even Russell stuck the boot in when he told Entertainment Weekly, “I will say that when I was told who was going to play Snake Plissken, my initial reaction was ‘Oh, man!’ I do think that character was quintessentially one thing. And that is, American.”
Even though Carpenter signed up as an executive producer on the project, this didn’t stop it from languishing in development hell for years. Directors Len Wiseman, Brett Ratner, and Jonathan Mostow all came and went before Butler decided enough was enough and abandoned the project. The Crazies director Breck Eisner was the next man in the frame, and he suggested the star of that movie, Timothy Olyphant, as the new Plissken. Eisner was wise enough to say, “We can’t make the movie unless we get the perfect Snake Plissken, and that’s a tall order. There are very few guys that could do it,” but sadly for him, Olyphant didn’t work out either.
Over the next decade-plus, more suitors jumped on board the Plissken train, including super producer Joel Silver, who wanted to make a trilogy that filled in some of the antihero’s backstory. More rumoured leading men, including Charlie Hunnam, Dan Stevens, and Jon Bernthal, were bandied around. Directing team Radio Silence – of the new Scream films – got involved for a while, as did The Invisible Man’s Leigh Whannel, but the proposed new vision simply never came together.
Throughout all the years of tortured development on the project, though, one man was conspicuous by his absence. In 2023, Russell admitted that he may be open to the idea of returning to his most iconic character, but only if Carpenter was the man at the helm. As he put it on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, “Oh, Snake? No. John? No. Period,” before adding, “John Carpenter is the reason for Snake Plissken. I did make him happen, but John Carpenter movies are John Carpenter movies, and that’s what’s fun about them.”
While he’d be open to it if it involved his buddy, there was one version of an Escape From New York reboot that Russell absolutely positively would never agree to star in. In ’07, EW asked Russell if he’d be interested in making a cameo in a new version or if he’d consider playing the cabbie role portrayed by Ernest Borgnine in the original film. His response was swift, definitive, and amusingly foul-mouthed. “Fuck that!” the star exclaimed. “I am Snake Plissken!”
