Stephen Norrington, the director that kicked off the Blade franchise and caused Sir Sean Connery to retire after the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen debacle, has submitted a well-received draft script for his new Crow film, according to an anonymous source at Mania.
As we reported last December, Norrington is prepping the film for Relativity Media (The Wolfman, MacGruber) and has promised an "almost documentary style" to differentiate the reboot from the fantastical gothic original.
A "new character and storyline" are promised, so this isn't a remake per se, staving off the problem of having to exactly replace the iconic Brandon Lee, who was famously, tragically killed just before filming finished on The Crow 1.
But Norrington's Crow will have to work hard to avoid the pitfalls of the rest of the series, which staggered with City of Angels, reeled with Salvation, and finally collapsed choking to the floor and expired with Wicked Prayer. We won't even mention the TV series. Oh, wait...
All previous attempts to replicate the success of The Crow have fallen foul of what is a very limited formula: goth'd up zombie asskicker returns from dead for revenge, with a stonking alt-rock soundtrack. Even repeating Brandon Lee's look is problematic, since Eric Draven painted on the smile out of grief, bitterness and pure sarcasm, and it's not at all clear why his successors did the same. We're thinking the formula could be tweaked (Salvation toyed with whodunnit; it could work as a Western a la High Plains Drifter; it could be retooled as something a bit weird and existential like Point Blank) but we're struggling to imagine how it can be made really different. Any ideas?
And while you're about it, Mania reports that the project is moving forward quickly and the producers are now looking at casting. Who are you putting in the leather pants?