“The Crow” first reactions are taking flight, and producer Molly Hassell is more than a little “surprised” that the original film‘s team isn’t more supportive of the remake.
Bill Skarsgård leads the new iteration of the graphic novel adaptation from director Rupert Sanders, which is released exactly 30 years after the story was first brought to life in the 1994 cult drama starring late actor Brandon Lee.
“It should make people proud,” Hassell told The Hollywood Reporter. “I’m surprised it hasn’t made the original filmmakers more proud, because it’s a step in a different direction, but it’s a necessary step to deal with the age-old themes of love and loss.”
“The Crow” centers on soulmates Eric (Skarsgård) and Shelly (FKA Twigs) who are brutally murdered when the demons of her dark past catch up with them. Per the official synopsis, given the chance to save his true love by sacrificing himself, Eric sets out to seek merciless revenge on their killers, traversing the worlds of the living and the dead to put the wrong things right.
Sanders directs from a script penned by Zach Baylin and William Schneider.
Co-screenwriter Schneider added to THR, “We didn’t want to go the same route, because we felt like that did a disservice to the film. Instead, we wanted to chart our own course almost as a way to sort of celebrate it and say, ‘Hey, we found a new way into the story, and we want them both to exist with their own voices, with their own set of fans.’ I hope everyone walks away from this film just reinvested in the people they love and care about. Because yes, it’s about grief, it’s about loss, but it’s also about sacrifice and what you’re willing to do for the person you love.”
Actor Skarsgård takes over the title character role that Bruce Lee’s son Brandon Lee played in the original feature. Lee was killed on set during the final days of production when a prop gun fired. “The Crow” has been set for various remakes over the past three decades, with Mark Wahlberg, Jason Momoa, Bradley Cooper, James McAvoy, Tom Hiddleston, and Skarsgård’s own brother Alexander Skarsgård all previously attached to different iterations prior to Sanders’ film.
And while director Sanders told Vanity Fair that the reimagining will honor the original film’s legacy, early reviews have been mixed, especially after original filmmaker Alex Proyas said he’d prefer the remake hadn’t been made all together.
“I really don’t get any joy from seeing negativity about any fellow filmmakers work. And I’m certain the cast and crew really had all good intentions, as we all do on any film,” Proyas wrote in a social media post. “So it pains me to say any more on this topic, but I think the fan’s response speaks volumes. [‘The Crow’] is not just a movie. Brandon Lee died making it, and it was finished as a testament to his lost brilliance and tragic loss. It is his legacy. That’s how it should remain.”
Screenwriter Cliff Dorfman, who at one point was attached to a different iteration of a slated remake that was to be directed by F. Javier Gutierrez, shared in a since-deleted tweet that Sanders’ “The Crow” was “unwatchable.”
“If hypothetically, one happened to see a screening of @TheCrow_Movie #thecrow which @Lionsgate is releasing in August, one might say, it’s horrible, it’s unwatchable, don’t waste your money, or can’t believe it’s so much worse than the original,” Dorfman wrote. “It is. And don’t.”
“The Crow” premieres August 23 in theaters.
