Beginning with the stunning set of morbidly dark, touching, and harrowingly touching, comics by James O’Barr, the legacy of The Crow hasn’t gone without its rough patches; as after the comics and the much loved 1994 movie starring Brandon Lee (Rapid Fire), there came three appalling sequels, and a TV series that had heart, but lacked the impact of the original movie; something which seems to be continuing with the planned big-screen remake of the film.
It’s been in pre-production for quite sometime, has seen Mark Wahlberg (The Fighter) turn down the lead role, the highly invested Stephen Norrington (Blade) walk away due to ‘creative differences’, and re-writes, that had left its future somewhere in-between limbo, and non-existent; a place where Relativity Media is now attempting to rescue it from, by considering two new directors to helm the project.
First on Relativity’s list is 28 Weeks Later’s Juan Carlos Fresnadillo; who will shortly be finishing work on his horror/thriller Intruders, and has already taken meetings with producers about taking on The Crow; who’s followed closely by Javier Guiterrez (Before the Fall); a director who’s about to start work on House of Horror, and currently has another two projects lined up after that.
So far there’s no real telling who will land the gig; or if it will in fact be Fresnadillo or Guiterrez; but what is certain is that Relativity seem pretty committed to bringing this new Crow to fruition, and hope to introduce a new generation to the tormented world of Eric Draven (the protagonist who comes back from the dead to avenge the brutal murders of him and his fiancee), and bring forth an unexplored Crow that will go back to the roots of James O’Barr’s classic comics.
