Irish/UK co-production The Escapist to get US remake starring Liam Neeson

In 2008 the Jameson Dublin Film Festival surprise film was Rupert Wyatt’s The Escapist, a tough prison drama/thriller starring Brian Cox, Joseph Fiennes, Liam Cunningham, Seu Jorge, Dominic Cooper, Steven Mackintosh, Stephen Farrelly and Damian Lewis.

An Irish and UK co-production the film was well received at Sundance, where it world premiered, as well as by the surprise film audience in 2008, including this author. It failed however to find an audience outside of the festival circuit, earning just over $13,000 from a limited release in the US.

Collider is reporting that the film is set for a US remake, with Ballymena man Liam Neeson taking over from Cox in the lead role as a prison inmate with a life sentence who plots his escape to visit his sick daughter.

Legendary Pictures are behind the film, with original director, and co-writer, Wyatt on as producer. Sean O’Keefe is rewriting the script, presumably to set it in the US, rather than in Kilmainham Gaol pretending to be London.