We learned back in March that Robert Rodriguez would be the man in charge of bringing Snake Plissken back to the screen for Twentieth Century Fox’s Escape from New York reboot, with Neil Cross (“Luther”) penning the script. We’ve been told it’s a prequel to John Carpenter’s film, and we have a bit of an update for ya today.

Speaking with Deadline, Cross reveals today that not only has Carpenter read the script, but he’s also given it the green light.

“Robert Rodriguez is attached to direct and it’s looking good and exciting,” Cross told the site. “It was quite a challenging script, it’s a challenging thing to reinvent. One of the most terrifying sentences I’ve ever heard in my life is ‘we’ve given the script to John Carpenter’. I crawled around for three days thinking ‘oh my god’ but we got John Carpenter’s seal of approval. He approved it and that’s all I need.”

Cross continued, “You never quite know [if it’s done] but I might need to do some rewrites and do some nip and tuck but in the first approximation, my job is done.”

Last we heard, Carpenter will executive produce the prequel/reboot, which the studio hopes will launch a brand new, Planet of the Apes-like franchise.

The original was set in a futuristic Gotham circa 1997. Kurt Russell of course played Snake Plissken, an eyepatch-sporting tough guy who is conscripted to rescue the President of the United States after Air Force One — en route to a summit that could head off World War III — goes missing after it crashes in New York, which has been relegated to a maximum security prison. Plissken, a former special forces operative convicted of trying to rob the Federal Reserve, is given 22 hours to liberate the president and a tape he carries which holds the key to peace. If he fails, he’s wired to explode.