In March of last year, producer Joel Silver and StudioCanal announced that they were moving forward on a reboot of John Carpenter's 1981 action classic Escape From New York. Then we heard nothing else about it. Now, Collider has caught up with the man himself for an update, with Silver revealing that this sci-fi thriller will actually be set up as a trilogy, and it will be inspired by the video game Batman: Arkham City.

The seminial 80s classic Escape From New York takes place during a time in the United States when crime is at an all-time high, and the entire island of Manhattan has been turned into a maximum-security prison. Kurt Russell plays the now iconic Snake Plissken, a dangerous criminal that is tasked with breaking into Manhattan to save the President of the United States, who has been kidnapped. Gerard Butler, Tom Hardy, and Jeremy Renner were all said to be circling the project as Snake, a role that has yet been cast.

As of now, the screenplay is not yet completed. Joel Silver gave this update.

"No, no we're not, no we're not [done]. I mean, it's funny because we have a relationship with StudioCanal, which somehow ended up with the rights to that, and it has been floating around LA or at least in the development world for a long time."

This is when the producer revealed that he wants to turn the franchise into a trilogy.

"I always liked Kurt Russell's character, the Snake Plissken character, so I've always like that idea, but we kind of figured out a way to do almost a trilogy of that story."

When news first broke that the film was getting the proper reboot treatment with the intention of turning it into a new franchise, it was described as being in the same vein as Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Now, Joel Silver actually wants to compare it to the DC Comics video game Batman: Arkham City.

""There was a videogame that came out a few years ago called Arkham City, which shows Gotham became this kind of walled prison. And they never deal with that in the story of Escape From New York, so part of our idea was to kind of see how the city became this walled prison and how the Snake Plissken character was a hero and how he became not looked at as a hero. And then, in the middle of the story, would be the movie that we, you know, previously saw about the President's daughter goes down, he has to go in and get her. And then, you know, they did a sequel, John Carpenter's Escape from L.A., but I would like to then kind of find a way to have New York go back to a place that we'd like to see what it is today.

So there is a way to tell the story in three ways, but we haven't got there yet and we're just starting."

The first chapter of the Escape from New York is nowhere near ready to go, so its anybody's guess when we might see the movie on screens. You can watch the interview with Joel Silver: CLICK HERE