I get the distinct impression our CHUD readers are decidedly lukewarm about The Crow remake in general. Mark Wahlberg’s reported interest only helped nuke it a little further, canceling out the cool of Nick Cave’s pen.
The following news will probably kill your interest altogether. According to Mania’s Comics2Film, Stephen Norrington has left the project and the site managed to get some very juicy quotes out of Norrington as to why.
Yes, I hear you. Who cares? Norrington killed The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. You’re loving this news. This is the best thing that could happen to a remake of The Crow that you didn’t particularly want. Now you’re interested.
Unfortunately, the reasons Norrington left were sound and good. He left because the “big actor” interested in the playing the titular avian wanted the script rewritten. Fair enough if this was Norrington’s script, but this was the script Cave had worked on. Let me repeat that: They trashed Nick Cave’s script. Says Norrington: “As I had gotten involved explicitly as a writer-director my exit was inevitable. I was bummed. I had developed a genuinely authentic take that respected the source material while moving beyond it, and Nick Cave came in and added more depth. I think the fans would have been pleasantly surprised.”
Intriguingly, the prickly actor in question doesn’t seem to be Wahlberg. Norrington knows nothing about Wahlberg or an offer, but actually endorsed him “if they take a blue collar approach … I think he could really ground the supernatural stuff.” Does that “if” signal a clue as to what direction the anonymous actor wanted? Did Cave make it too weird, and whoever this star is want it to be more Batmanesque? More, say, blue collar?
What’s ultimately disappointing about this is the (possible) loss of Cave’s script. I don’t think the guy walks on water or anything, but his Gladiator sequel was pretty damn cool. It didn’t exactly work as a continuation to Gladiator, but with a few tweaks it was one hell of a standalone or spinoff story. Frankly, it’s the kind of supernatural avenger story The Crow should actually be. If there’s a reason to remake this movie (and I’m certainly not in the “Don’t touch it!” category, more like the “I’d rather see an original Cave screenplay” camp), a truly eerie script would be that reason.
ETA: Empire confirmed nothing. Sorry for the gaffe.
9 comments
Well shit. I was starting to get pretty stoked about this movie. Even with Wahlberg. Shit. I hope they bring on a cooler director (Gore Verbinski? Timur Bekmambetov?) who'll make 'em get the good script back. Fuck the actors.
"confirmed by Empire, who managed to get some very juicy quotes…"
What the? The Empire article is just a mildly reworded copy of the Mania article. The juice quotes came directly from Mania's report.
Corrected. I misread Empire as saying "this site spoke to Norrington"
I apologize. I should have realized since Mania is the only one who ever does Crow updates.
I just wish I could actually load their site without it crashing so I could have seen the quotes myself.
Nick Cave does walk on water, and he has since The Birthday Party days. Music, literature, film, he does it all, and does it well.
Batman is white collar.
Now that he's done eating Crow, he can go back to eating shit, which falls more in line with Norrington's M.O. anyway. Zing. OK, I really liked Blade, but that was the exception…
To what Gladiator sequel are you referring? I just IMDB'd Cave and there's nothing there.
Did you try googling "Nick Cave Gladiator sequel"? Because that will give you all the info you need.
Is Norrington ever gonna make an actual movie again? LXG certainly never counts and Blade was a long fucking time ago. The first graders from '98 have graduated by now, Stevie N.!
And seriously, they need to all give up on The Crow. The first film was awesome, the sequel roughly 50% good and three and four were shit. Give….it….up!
Comments are shown as archived from the original site; new comments are closed.