Exclusive: Breck Eisner on The Brood, Escape from New York, and Blood of the Innocent
Steve Barton
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Just a little while ago we had the chance to sit down with director Breck Eisner to discuss next week’s DVD and Blu-ray release of The Crazies, and during all our crazy talk we also waxed on about some of his upcoming projects (i.e., The Brood, Blood of the Innocent, and of course his upcoming Escape from New York remake!)
Kicking things off, Breck offered his final word on the proposed remake of David Cronenberg’s The Brood and why he’s not doing it —
“It was only rumored that I was doing that film. Honestly? I just couldn’t,” says Eisner. “I was approached to do it, and the studios really wanted me to tackle it, but I just had to pass on it. The reason I passed is that I like that movie far too much. The Brood is just so daring and so risky and so flawed and amazing, ridiculous and incredible, that I’m just too much of a fan of that movie and its execution to remake it. It’s perfect the way that it is, and I love it too much to ever touch it. I’m not that crazy.”
However, one project Eisner is really excited to get started on is a remake of the John Carpenter classic Escape from New York.
“I had to go back and watch the original again to decide if I wanted to do it,” Eisner tells us. “I hadn’t seen it in probably ten years. As I kid I was absolutely obsessed with that movie. I saw it probably hundreds of times. Snake Plissken is the coolest character of all time, or so I thought. It’s a movie that still holds up to this day for the type of movie that it was. When you look at Escape from New York today, the whole social commentary of the movie is completely irrelevant now. It couldn’t be farther from the reality of the world that we live in today. It all clearly suffered from a really small budget, which is why we saw the President’s plane crash on what looked like an Atari 2600 graphic instead of seeing the event itself. Combine those two things with the fact that we now have an audience that doesn’t know that particular movie so well anymore, and that’s what gave me the confidence that this could be a fun remake. Just like my remake of The Crazies, it will be very similar and different as well.”
In terms of a rating …
“We are pushing for an R rating right now, but we’ll see. You never know when you’re talking about an expensive studio movie, but I really think the end result will be R-rated.”
Just to lay aside some fears that you may have, Breck assured us that one thing that will not change is the character of Snake Plissken.
“He’s going to be the badass, eyepatch-wearing antihero that we all love,” insists Eisner. “He has to be! He’s gonna be! I actually think contractually, and this is hilarious, in Carpenter’s contract there are ten points which Snake must be, and one of them is a badass. It literally states that in the contract, which makes this the funniest and coolest contract I think ever written. My Snake WILL NOT be a different kind of character. What you’re getting with Escape from New York is of course the title, the character, and the world. Those things must all be there, and they MUST all be the same way.”
And finally, Breck gave us the scoop on what the deal is with the Dracula vs. Jack the Ripper flick Blood of the Innocent.
“Directing that one will be fun. It’s a pitch that [writer] Bill Marsilii and I came up with based on the Mark Wheatley comic book from the Eighties, which I had never even heard of before. It’s kind of an obscure four-part comic that put together Dracula and Jack the Ripper in the same space. As soon as I heard that idea, I thought it would be a genius idea for a movie. In it Jack the Ripper is actually a hero who’s trying to stop a vampire invasion in England. I’m totally obsessed with getting this made at the moment. Hopefully we’ll have a script by the end of the summer for it.”
There you have it, folks. The official lowdown on several projects we’ve been talking about for quite some time now. What are your thoughts? There’s a comments section below. USE IT!
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