People sue people all the time in Hollywood, sometimes over things that make sense and sometimes over things that don’t. One of the more recent lawsuits involved legendary director John Carpenter getting a piece of the pie from a lawsuit over the Luc Besson film, Lockout, since it was basically a ripoff of Escape From New York City. The company heading up the lawsuit always wanted to go after Konami and director Hideo Kojima over Metal Gear Solid, but filmmaker John Carpenter forbade it.

Niche Gamer picked up the news from an silly interview on The Hollywood Reporter where they failed to ask a lot of important follow-up questions. They noted that CanalPlus had managed to win a settlement suit against Besson and the production company over the low-budget action flick Lockout for ripping off of Escape From New York City, netting them only €80,000. According to Carpenter…

“CanalPlus is the company that, with me, owns Escape From New York. They came to me and said, “Luc Besson ripped you off on Lockout.” Or Lockdown, whatever the hell that was. And they sent me the movie, and yes, he did. It’s the same story. (Laughs) I mean, you can’t do that, can you? You have to change a couple things. He’s after the president’s daughter? Come on. So I took him to French court.”

 

“[…] [Besson] has another company. But I think they’re actually doing some business with him, too. [CanalPlus] wanted to also go after the video game Metal Gear Solid, which is kind of a rip-off of Escape From New York, too, but I told them not to do that. I know the director of those games, and he’s a nice guy, or at least he’s nice to me.”

The interview is kind of bizarre. Carpenter repeatedly mentions that no one talks to him about anything that goes on in Hollywood, whether it’s regarding his movies, remakes or lawsuits. However, as mentioned, apparently Hideo Kojima does or did talk to him and was nice about the influences that Carpenter’s movie legacy had on the Metal Gear Solid franchise.

For those unfamiliar, the lead character, Snake, is based both visually and thematically on Snake Plissken from the Escape From New York and Escape From LA movies, a role made famous by the incomparable Kurt Russell.

Carpenter later mentions in the interview that he just likes to sit and watch basketball on television and play video games. The person conducting the interview failed to even ask “What video games do you play?”

Epic. Fail.

(Main image courtesy of MistranslationoftheModernGamer)