Breck Eisner on Escape from New York Remake, Flash Gordon, and the "Jack the Ripper vs. Dracula" Movie
Posted 06.26.10 by Ryan
After finding success with the remake of The Crazies earlier this year, Breck Eisner is busy filling his schedule with several different projects, including a recently announced comic book adaptation of Blood of the Innocent, which pits infamous murderer Jack the Ripper against Dracula. Eisner spoke to FEARnet, explaining his interest in making the movie.
Yeah, I just love this concept; it's such a cool pitch. It's f**king great. It's dark and aggressive and intense, but kind of expensive so we'll see if I can get a studio to commit the resources to really take a chance on a movie like this. Mark [Wheatley, the comic's author] gave a bit of the pitch, Jack the Ripper vs. Dracula, but really Jack the Ripper is the hero and he's trying to save the world from Dracula and his vampire brides. It's just a cool, aggressive, awesome pitch and I'd love to make that.
Up next for Eisner, however, is another remake, this time John Carpenter's 1981 classic Escape from New York.
I'm working on a couple of projects and that's kinda the closest to going is Escape from New York and I'm hopeful that's the next one. We're still in script phase, I was brought on on an [early] draft of the script, we've hired a new writer now, we're gonna do a polish and budget, go out to talent and hopefully move quickly from there. You know how things are in this town (laughs) you never know what will happen and what won't. The studio is really aggressive in their desire to make this movie so my primary focus is there, although I'm working hard on the other projects too especially Flash Gordon.
So for those still trying to keep track: It's Escape from New York first, then possibly Blood of the Innocent, and then the remake of Flash Gordon.
It depends on how the projects come to fruition; Flash Gordon is a total passion project for me. We've just extended the option and the studio's very committed in trying to make it happen. It's just a gigantic 3D experience with years of prep, it’s one of those movies you get once in a lifetime to make and for me it's been a passion of mine since I was a kid. If I could pick and just control everything I would love to make Flash Gordon, it's really kind of my dream job, but it's multi-year, in terms of writing and designing.
No matter which movie Eisner makes first, it's clear the young director will be busy making genre movies for a while.