Kurt Russell To Return For A Sequel To His Most Popular Movie?
The filmmaker recently spoke to Den Of Geek about the possibility of a third movie.
This article is more than 2 years old
John Carpenter is the filmmaker behind the Halloween franchise, Big Trouble In Little China, and classics like Escape From New York. He also made a sequel to that one, called Escape From L.A.. Unfortunately, audiences didn’t take well to the Snake Plissken follow-up. The sequel has a poor rating on Rotten Tomatoes and cost the studio millions at the box office. Understandably, this made it difficult for Kurt Russell to return as Snake Plissken for a third installment. Russell and Carpenter never gave up though, and apparently, the third movie is still not ruled out as an option.
The filmmaker recently spoke to Den Of Geek about the possibility of a third movie. The follow-up is called Escape From Earth. “Well, it’s just sitting there,” John Carpenter told them. He and Kurt Russell had tried for the third movie shortly after Escape From New York flopped, but the studio wasn’t interested. They went on to pitch different iterations like television series and even other takes on a third movie, but none of them landed with a studio. After all these years, should audiences rule out a return for Kurt Russell as Plissken? Not so fast. “You never know,” John Carpenter told the outlet. “I learned never to say never in the business.”
Escape From L.A. ended on a cliffhanger. The 1996 movie saw Kurt Russell press a button on a device that cut power, and thus communication, the world over. This dystopian tale leaves the world in a place where it needs to restart society after the world had been dependent on technology for so long. Escape From Earth, the planned third movie, was meant to show Snake Plissken in a world struggling to go without electricity. With the entire planet effectively a warzone, there was a lot of story to tell in the third movie.
It can be hard to believe that the franchise never picked up again. Escape From New York is an iconic action movie. Kurt Russell’s role as Snake Plissken is impossible to forget. Rumors that a reboot or sequel are in the works often pop up online, and considering how many times John Carpenter has tried to revive the franchise, it seems like many of them are likely true. There was a time when Carpenter and Russell were shopping around a pitch for a 100 episode series for the franchise. At another time, he had a script for Escape From Mars. When that, too, was rejected, Carpenter renamed Kurt Russell’s Snake to Desolation Williams, and the movie became Ghosts Of Mars, starring Ice Cube as the title character.
While John Carpenter isn’t ruling out a return for the franchise, it would be a surprise to fans. Kurt Russell claimed he was retiring after Christmas Chronicles 2, which was released on Netflix in 2020. However, he has since appeared in F9 as Mr. Nobody and voiced Ego for What If… on Disney+. Like John Carpenter said, it appears that we shouldn’t rule anything out in this industry. Escape From Earth may require a little rewriting to make up for Kurt Russell’s age, but we can’t rule it out as a movie we might see coming down the line. After all, the fans are still there. The script is written. John Carpenter is apparently still in. The only piece needed is a studio to get excited about it.
