It’s been nearly a year since news broke that Joel Silver’s Silver Pictures and Studio Canal snatched up the rights to John Carpenter’s Escape from New York after New Line’s claim to them lapsed, but announcements regarding Snake Plissken’s return to the big screen just about ended there. However, while talking to Silver in New York City about his upcoming release, Non-Stop, he offered Collider an update on the status of the project and a clearer sense of how he’s going to turn the film into a trilogy. Hit the jump for more.

The 1981 original takes place during a time when crime is skyrocketing, and so much so that the entire island of Manhattan was evacuated so that it could be turned into a maximum-security prison. That’s where we meet Kurt Russell’s Snake Plissken. When the President of the United States happens to find himself stranded inside the prison, Plissken is given an opportunity – rescue the President and snag himself a pardon or fail and die via microscopic explosives that are floating around inside his body.

When asked whether or not the script is complete, Silver replied:

“No, no we’re not, no we’re not. I mean, it’s funny because we have a relationship with Studio Canal, which somehow ended up with the rights to that, and it has been floating around LA or at least in the development world for a long time.”

Right when we found out that Silver decided to commit to take on the challenge of producing the reboot, we also learned that he didn’t want just one new Escape from New York film; he wants a trilogy. Silver further explained:

“I always liked Kurt’s character, the Snake Plissken character, so I’ve always like that idea, but we kind of figured out a way to do almost a trilogy of that story.”

Previous reports have likened the first film of this potential trilogy to Rise of the Planet of the Apes, but Silver broke it down further:

“There was a videogame that came out a few years ago called Arkham City, which shows how when Gotham became this kind of walled prison and how it became a walled prison. And they never deal with that in the story of Escape from New York, so part of our idea was to kind of see how the city became this walled prison and how the Snake Plissken character was a hero and how he became not looked at as a hero. And then, in the middle of the story, would be the movie that we, you know, previously saw about the President’s daughter goes down, he has to go in and get her. And then, you know, they did a sequel, Escape from LA, but I would like to then kind of find a way to have New York go back to a place that we’d like to see what it is today.”

Clearly Silver’s already got big plans for his Escape from New York series, but it’s also vital to point out that the project is nowhere near go-time yet. Silver noted:

“So there is a way to tell the story in three ways, but we haven’t got there yet and we’re just starting.”

Catch Silver discussing the Escape from New York trilogy in the video below and look out for our complete interview with the producer closer to Non-Stop’s February 28, 2014 debut.

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