John Carpenter talks Escape from NY remake, Thing Prequel, and gettin’ paid

Last Updated on July 23, 2021

John Carpenter is one of those directors who doesn’t really care if his work is remade, as long as he gets a check. That’s been pretty obvious thus far, as a slew of his work has gone into the Remake-O-Matic and come out the worse for wear. (Not saying it’s his fault the quality of these remakes has been bad, mind you.) I suppose it’s that he’s taken the “they’re going to do it anyway” stance, which is indeed true, so can’t fault him too much for wanting a slice of the pie.

Killer Film caught up with Mr. Carpenter at a career retrospective thing and asked for his thoughts on a few projects he’s involved with, as well as his opinion regarding two properties he’s associated with – ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK andTHE THING – getting remade. (Although in the case of THE THING it’s a prequel. Semantics.)

On THE THING: “I am not involved with it at all. They didn’t even pay me any money. Some of the other remakes and sequels paid me money, but this one didn’t. I haven’t heard a word (about its release). I haven’t heard. No one tells me anything. No one tells me. They didn’t ask me any questions. They treated me like the lacky that I am. I don’t want to do (direct) that. I’ve done it, man. I don’t want to do that again.”

“These days you need some babes. You have to have the babes. They are doing the story of the Norwegian camp in the prequel. I did see a couple of photos of the girl (Mary Elizabeth-Winstead) with the flamethrower flaming away. I’m assuming she’s battling the aliens. We’ll see what happens. I don’t know what their plans are for the creature itself. I don’t know what it looks like. I don’t know where they are going with it.”

The man wants his money, yo! Luckily for him, in regards to the ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK remake (which of course is still in development hell), he got what’s comin’ to him.

“They paid me money. That’s always good. But I haven’t heard anything on that either. I know they are trying to get a director involved. They had Breck Eisner for a while, then I don’t know what happened. I haven’t heard anything. He was there to work on a version of the script. I haven’t heard any new news on that. I don’t care to know some of these things. It’s better off not to know. There are certain things man was not meant to know, especially me.”

Ah John, such a philosopher… And pimp.

For more from the interview, which includes talk about some upcoming projects, head on over to Killer Film.

Amber Heard, from Carpenter’s THE WARD