When it comes to adaptations, Hollywood has a few projects that have been stuck in the famous development hell process for so many years that it’s unbelievable — they feel less like Hollywood productions and more like urban legends. By some miracle, some of them might actually find the light at the end of the tunnel, and that’s exactly what happened with one that originally came from a 1989 graphic novel. For more than a decade, this movie went through director changes, lead actor changes, screenwriter changes, and even studio changes, with increasingly popular actors showing up and dropping out what felt like a hundred times. Anyone would have given up on it, but the desire to keep pushing prevailed because it eventually made it to theaters not too long ago, with a lot of buzz surrounding it.
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The final result can still be debated today, especially since it’s a reboot and the comparisons to the original adaptation are huge. However, one thing is certain: the road to getting it made is pretty much a Hollywood movie on its own, and you have to give them credit for sheer persistence.
The Crow Reboot Took 15 Years to Hit Theaters
The Crowis a graphic novel published by James O’Barr that follows Eric Draven, who is murdered alongside his fiancée, Shelly. A year later, he returns from the dead with the help of a supernatural entity and gets the chance to avenge both murders. Basically, the whole plot revolves around a dead man coming back to settle the score with the people who destroyed his life. In 1994, director Alex Proyas brought that story to the big screen, starring Brandon Lee, which was very well received, grossing $94 million worldwide at the box office and becoming a critical success. But, as everyone knows, even though it eventually earned cult classic status, its legacy was forever marked by Lee’s death, after he was accidentally shot during filming by a projectile from a prop gun.
There were later three sequels, but none of them came close to the first installment, which is why they’re barely known by the general audience. So, in 2008, Hollywood decided to revive the franchise, with Stephen Norrington (director of Bladeand The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) being hired to write and direct a new version. From the beginning, the goal was never to remake Proyas’ movie; instead, Norrington wanted to reinvent The Crowwith a more realistic, aggressive, and mysterious approach. And at first, the project seemed to be on the right track, with things moving forward pretty optimistically. That’s when they started looking for the actor who would bring Eric to life in the new version.
Mark Wahlberg and Bradley Cooper were the main names being considered for the role, with the latter eventually becoming officially attached to the project. But in the middle of all that, Norrington left, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (director of 28 Weeks Later) came in, and suddenly Cooper moved away from the project due to scheduling conflicts. Some legal issues involving the production company, Relativity Media, started popping up as well, but in the end, it seemed like nothing more than a temporary setback. Then Fresnadillo left the director’s chair, and a pattern that would repeat itself several times over the following years began: one director leaves, the lead actor leaves, and the movie looks for a new combination. Wahlberg remained an option, but Channing Tatum, Ryan Gosling, Nicholas Hoult, and James McAvoy were also being considered.
That’s when the project’s development started to shift a little after F. Javier Gutiérrez (known for Before the Fall) took over, because his idea was to go back to the roots and make an adaptation much closer to the graphic novel instead of trying to compete with the 1994 movie. O’Barr himself eventually got involved as a creative consultant after initially being against another version, mainly because of his friendship with Lee. And it was during this phase that another name looked like it might actually move forward as Eric: Tom Hiddleston. The actor had just played Loki in Thorand The Avengers, spoke with the producers, and even did a makeup test (although some later reports suggested the media had made his involvement seem further along than it actually was).
In the end, Luke Evans was the one who got the role in 2013, and for a moment, The Crowreboot finally looked like it was coming together, with pre-production underway, locations being scouted, and more names being considered for the overall cast. But not long after that, Evans left the project, and Gutiérrez also walked away. The director’s chair then went to Corin Hardy (director of The Hallow) a year later, with Jack Huston as the new lead. And that’s when one of the biggest problems in the entire history of the project happened: Relativity Media filed for bankruptcy. As a result, pre-production was brought to a halt, and some key executives ended up leaving the company. The reboot was still considered a priority, but the thing is, that didn’t mean there was actually enough money or stability to get it made, right?
Hardy remained interested, but suddenly Huston dropped out of the role. Luckily, Jason Momoa showed up to resurrect the movie for good after finishing Aquaman. The actor officially joined as the newest Eric in 2016, and it wasn’t long before it was announced that filming was planned to begin in January 2017. Everything seemed to be falling into place, so much so that Highland Film Group and Electric Shadow acquired the rights to finance the film, and Sony Pictures also got involved with the project soon after. From there, the reboot was retitled The Crow Reborn, with a 2019 release date set (a year before that, reports claimed the movie was just five weeks away from starting production). However, by then it had become a habit for something to happen and derail everything: Momoa and Hardy walked away due to creative differences and issues involving one of the producers.
How the Reboot Finally Got Made
If it had been up to Proyas, a new version of The Crow would never have been made. The director of the original movie repeatedly stated he was against a reboot or remake out of respect for Lee’s legacy, and honestly, it’s hard not to consider that, especially after years of attempts and such a stubborn determination (maybe it was a sign, who knows?). It’s difficult to call this anything other than development hell, as this wasn’t just a film that took a long time to get made; it was several different productions trying to bring the story back to life at any cost. The irony is that The Crow spent more than a decade looking for its lead, only to unintentionally rack up a list of actors who would later become famous faces of the very superhero genre the movie helped shape.
In 2020, as was pretty much standard by then, the industry decided to take another shot at getting the project off the ground. The title went back to simply The Crow, and a new writer and director were sought. This time, the idea was to focus entirely on O’Barr’s work, without even the slightest attempt to draw from Proya’s film. That’s when the perfect combination finally came together: Zach Baylin and William Schneider on the screenplay, Rupert Sanders (director of Snow White and the Huntsman and Ghost in the Shell) behind the camera, and Bill Skarsgård as Eric. And surprisingly, the reboot entered production in 2022 (with FKA Twigs and Danny Huston among the other major names in the cast), without a single catastrophe stopping things for the first time. The challenge now was convincing audiences why this was worth watching.
The solution was to restructure the story and put Eric and Shelly’s arc much more at the center of everything, making it feel almost like a dark romance before turning the movie into an actual revenge story. Eric’s look was also reworked, since the idea was never really to make him a copy of the original: Skarsgård was covered in tattoos, given a much more contemporary style, and designed with an appearance inspired by ’90s rave culture and modern artists. And the result? Well, nothing particularly positive.
The Crowreboot hit theaters in 2024 and was met with negative reviews from critics, while ticket sales didn’t help either, bringing in only $24 million worldwide. It was a major box office failure, considering its estimated $50 million budget. Just for some perspective, it sits at 22% on Rotten Tomatoes, while the audience score is around 62%. That’s a pretty drastic difference, and the fact is the movie isn’t that bad, especially when it comes to Skarsgård’s casting. Maybe what ultimately worked against it was the baggage, because the 1994 feature still carries so much historical weight, on top of all the countless changes the project went through over more than 15 years, which naturally take a toll on a production.
The reboot managed to escape development hell, but maybe the most impressive part of the whole thing isn’t that it actually got made — it’s the fact that people just kept refusing to give up on it, only for all that effort to lead nowhere. When you look at how it all turned out, Proyas may have had a point.
The Crow (2024) is available to stream on Starz and rent on Prime Video.
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