Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...

I just counted. I’ve been e-mailed exactly 3,885,574,672 times this weekend regarding the rumor that was run at Bloody Disgusting about ESCAPE FROM EARTH, the second sequel to ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. For those of you who didn’t read the story there or at any of the other sites that linked to it over the weekend, basically there was an anonymous scooper who claimed that Kurt Russell and John Carpenter had a top-secret meeting last week at Paramount to seal the deal on making the sequel.

Trouble is, it ain’t true. Not a word of it.

Oh, sure, John Carpenter mentioned ESCAPE FROM EARTH as a possibility several times when he was doing press for ESCAPE FROM LA, and I remember when Debra Hill was actively working to resuscitate the Snake Plissken franchise through comic books. Fans are obviously still very fond of the character and the possibility of a sequel based on the volume of mail we got about it. Hell, even our very own Vern wrote me a sternly-worded letter in which he demanded that I get the truth sorted out immediately.

We were already working on it, though. We got the same e-mail Bloody Disgusting did that set this whole thing off. There were things in the e-mail that immediately struck me as false, so I reached out to John to ask him to either confirm or deny the possibility. The guy wrote about how Kurt Russell wanted Paramount to make this film before he’d sign a three-picture deal with them. The thing is, studios aren’t really in the habit of making “three-picture” deals with anyone anymore, especially not with a guy like Russell who, while undeniably cool, is hardly box-office magic. Also, Russell doesn’t pitch projects. He only meets on films that have a greenlight and that have a money offer on the table. Even if it is Carpenter, the film would have to be set up somewhere before Kurt would get involved.

But don’t take my word for it. Carpenter himself shot the entire rumor down today when we spoke. “ESCAPE FROM EARTH is an idea we had several years ago, but it never really got any further than that,” he said. When I asked him if he’d met at Paramount, he just laughed. “Nope.” In an e-mail, his wife and producer Sandy King also emphasized how untrue the story was.

”John has just spent a rousing week playing Tom Clancy's war video games and smoking in his favorite chair and eating fried chicken. Need I say more?”

I think that just about sums it up. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, Plissken fans, but there you have it.