How does one reboot that which clearly does not wish to be rebooted? In the case of cult classic comic book adaptation The Crow, you simply keep throwing names at the project until a handful of them stick long enough to get the damned thing into production.
Plans for a new spin on the movie that lives on infamy due to the tragic death of Brandon Lee in an on-set accident have been in the works since 2008, and yet The Crow V2.0 remains mired in the darkest recesses of development hell. Sure, Snow White and the Hunstman director Rupert Sanders has signed on with Bill Skarsgard in line to play Eric Draven, but we’ve been here before.
In fact, Redditors have been trawling through the long history of the ever-evolving plans to bring James O’Barr’s acclaimed source material back to the big screen to reinvent it for a new generation, and even they’re struggling to comprehend why Hollywood hasn’t simply given up and abandoned The Crow altogether.
Lee was right on the cusp of superstardom when his life was cut short at the age of just 28, and it’s doubtful that Sanders and Skarsgard will even be able to improve on Proyas’ original, no matter how talented an actor he may be, which sort of renders the whole thing moot when you consider the volume of talents to have flirted with the reinvention.
Let’s not forget that we’ve sailed in this exact same boat when Stephen Norrington, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, Francisco Javier Gutierrez, Corin Hardy, , Tom Hiddleston, Luke Evans, Bradley Cooper, Mark Wahlberg, James McAvoy, Ryan Gosling, Channing Tatum, Sam Witwer, Alexander Skarsgard, Jack Huston, Nicholas Hoult, and Jack O’Connell were all being linked with The Crow at one time or another, so we’ll believe the reboot is happening for real when we see it with our own eyes.