Movies
They Sort of, Kind of Already Remade ‘Escape From New York’
A Paris appeals court has ruled that writer Luc Besson must pay more than $500,000 (450,000 euros) in damages to John Carpenter and rights holder StudioCanal for plagiarizing Carpenter’s 1981 classic Escape From New York when he made the 2012 film Lockout, Deadline reports. Agence France-Presse reported on the ruling today.
How long until this iMDB credit gets changed?
This comes after Besson had appealed an original ruling in the case last fall that ordered Besson, his EuropaCorp production company and Besson’s Lockout co-writers/directors Stephen St. Leger and James Mather to pay $95,000 (85,000 euros) to co-writer/director Carpenter, co-writer Nick Castle and StudioCanal.
In Lockout, Guy Pierce stars as a wrongly convicted man who is offered his freedom if he can rescue the U.S President’s daughter (Maggie Grace) from an outer space prison taken over by violent inmates.
Escape From New York centers on Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell), a soldier-turned-bank robber who is forced to rescue the U.S. President when his plane crash-lands in Manhattan which has become a giant maximum-security prison taken over by inmates.
Carpenter’s original lawsuit sought $2.4 million (2.2M euros), saying his movie was copied.
A Besson spokesman told AFP today they were “very surprised by the ruling, but the judges have spoken and we will accept their judgment.”
Surprised as they may be, the court has ruled it as a plagiarized story, which means Lockout is pretty much an unauthorized remake of Escape From New York.
Have any of you seen Lockout?
Filming is underway on The Invisible Man director Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man for Universal and Blumhouse, which will be howling its way into theaters on January 17, 2025.
Deadline reports that Matilda Firth (Disenchanted) is the latest actor to sign on, joining Christopher Abbott (Poor Things), Julia Garner (The Royal Hotel), and Sam Jaeger.
The project will mark Whannell’s second monster movie and fourth directing collaboration with Blumhouse Productions (The Invisible Man, Upgrade, Insidious: Chapter 3).
Wolf Man stars Christopher Abbott as a man whose family is being terrorized by a lethal predator.
Writers include Whannell & Corbett Tuck as well as Lauren Schuker Blum & Rebecca Angelo.
Jason Blum is producing the film. Ryan Gosling, Ken Kao, Bea Sequeira, Mel Turner and Whannell are executive producers. Wolf Man is a Blumhouse and Motel Movies production.
In the wake of the failed Dark Universe, Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man has been the only real success story for the Universal Monsters brand, which has been struggling with recent box office flops including the comedic Renfield and period horror movie The Last Voyage of the Demeter. Giving him the keys to the castle once more seems like a wise idea, to say the least.
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