Escape from New York is a 1981 American independent science fiction action film co-written, co-scored and directed by John Carpenter, and starring Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Pleasence, Isaac Hayes, Adrienne Barbeau and Harry Dean Stanton.

The film, set in the near-future world of 1997, concerns a crime-ridden United States, which has converted Manhattan Island in New York City into the country's sole maximum security prison.

Former Special Forces and current federal prisoner Snake Plissken (Russell)[5] is given just 24 hours to go in and rescue the President of the United States, after which, if successful, he will be pardoned.

Released in the United States on July 10, 1981, the film received positive reviews from critics and was a commercial success, grossing more than $50 million at the box office.

In 1988, amidst war between the United States and an alliance of China and the Soviet Union, Manhattan has been converted into a maximum security prison to address a 400% increase in crime.

Romero, a subordinate of the Duke of New York (a powerful crime boss), warns the President has been captured and will be killed if any further rescue attempts are made.

Snake uses a stealth glider to land atop the World Trade Center, then follows the signal of the President's tracking device to a vaudeville theater, only to find the tracker on the arm of a deluded vagrant.

An engineer, Brain has established a small gasoline refinery fueling the city's remaining cars; he tells Snake the Duke plans to lead a mass escape across the 69th Street Bridge, using the President as a human shield.

While Snake is forced to fight against Duke's champion Slag in a deathmatch, Brain and Maggie kill Romero and flee with the President.

Cabbie reveals he bartered with Romero for a cassette tape that contains information about nuclear fusion, intended to be an international peace offering.

At the time, Russell described his character as "a mercenary, and his style of fighting is a combination of Bruce Lee, The Exterminator, and Darth Vader, with Eastwood's vocal-ness.

Initially, the second film he was going to make to finish the contract was The Philadelphia Experiment, but because of script-writing problems, Carpenter rejected it in favor of this project.

[17] The film's setting proved to be a potential problem for Carpenter, who needed to create a decaying, semi-destroyed version of New York City on a shoestring budget.

[18] Bernardi suggested East St. Louis, Illinois, because it was filled with old buildings "that exist in New York now, and [that] have that seedy run-down quality" that the team was looking for.

The filmmaker purchased the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge for one dollar from the government and then gave it back to them, for the same amount, once production was completed, "so that they wouldn't have any liability," Hill remembers.

[18] Locations across the river in St. Louis were used, including Union Station and the Fox Theatre, both of which have since been renovated,[20] as well as the building that would eventually become the Schlafly Tap Room microbrewery.

"[16] The gladiatorial fight to the death scene between Snake and Slag (played by professional wrestler Ox Baker) was filmed in the Grand Hall at St. Louis Union Station.

As Snake pilots the glider into the city, three screens on his control panel display wireframe animations of the landing target on the World Trade Center and surrounding buildings.

Another version is the Collector's Edition, a two-disc set featuring a high definition remastered transfer with a 5.1 stereo audio track, two commentaries (one by John Carpenter and Kurt Russell, another by producer Debra Hill and Joe Alves), a making-of featurette, the first issue of a comic book series titled John Carpenter's Snake Plissken Chronicles, and the 10-minute Colorado bank robbery deleted opening sequence.

Director John Carpenter decided to add the original scenes into the special edition release as an extra only: "After we screened the rough cut, we realized that the movie didn't really start until Snake got to New York.

[33] In Time magazine, Richard Corliss wrote, "John Carpenter is offering this summer's moviegoers a rare opportunity: to escape from the air-conditioned torpor of ordinary entertainment into the hothouse humidity of their own paranoia.

[36] Christopher John reviewed Escape from New York in Ares Magazine #10 and commented that "It is solid summer entertainment of unusually high caliber.

The website's consensus reads: "Featuring an atmospherically grimy futuristic metropolis, Escape from New York is a strange, entertaining jumble of thrilling action and oddball weirdness.

Gerard Butler was attached to play Snake Plissken, Neal H. Moritz would produce through his Original Film company, and Ken Nolan would be in charge of the screenplay.

[45][46][47] In April 2010, Variety reported that Breck Eisner was being looked at to direct a remake of Escape from New York, with David Kajganich and Allan Loeb providing revisions to the script.

[51] In February 2019, it was reported that Leigh Whannell would be writing the script after Luther creator Neil Cross completed a recent iteration of the project.

[55] In 1981, Bantam Books published a movie tie-in novelization written by Mike McQuay that adopts a lean, humorous style reminiscent of the film.

The novel includes significant scenes that were cut from the film, such as the Federal Reserve Depository robbery that results in Snake's incarceration.

It explains that the West Coast is a no-man's land, and the nation's population is gradually being driven insane by nerve gas as a result of World War III.

Rather than presenting to the world a new energy source in the form of nuclear fusion (as claimed in the film), the tape actually reveals the successful development of a "fallout-free thermonuclear weapon, which would grant the US supremacy in the global conflict.