How ‘The Crow’s Wings Got Clipped At The Box Office: Reboot Of Brandon Lee Cult Pic Bombs With $4.6M

Anthony D'Alessandro
·7-min read

After 16 years of fits and starts, a $50M reboot of 1994 goth thriller The Crow finally flew into theaters and dropped out of the sky with a disastrous $4.6M opening.

Forget about critics plucking the feathers from The Crow at 19%, those moviegoers who attended Thursday night, predominantly fans, slammed the movie on Comscore/Screen Engine’s PostTrak with one star, a 47% grade and a 36% definite recommend.

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Lionsgate limited its skin in the game with a $10M North American acquisition and $15M P&A on this Rupert Sanders-directed take, starring burgeoning IT and John Wick: Chapter 4 genre star Bill Skarsgård. At the end of the day, the studio stands to lose more — in the neighborhood of $30M — on its $110M-plus feature take of gonzo sci-fi video game Borderlands.

So why make a big deal here on The Crow? Even if, let’s say, Lionsgate possibly breaks even in pic’s sixth ancillary cycle down the road?

At a time when theatrical is raging back, and the key to success lies in IP, it stands to reason that a Crow for the current 18-34 generation would be willed into existence. However, if there’s a takeaway here, it’s that some reboots of storied IP are better left unmade. That’s a hard pill to swallow when current mass moviegoers are embracing long-delayed franchise sequels, i.e. Top Gun: Maverick, Bad Boys for Life and even Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Granted, The Crow was always horror niche and didn’t exactly scream yippy skippy, but the 1994 title did break out (read on). The original movie follows a grim reaper, if you will, who is released from the grave by a supernatural crow and makes it his business to right the wrongs of those who were unjustly killed. In the original, Brandon Lee’s protag and his girlfriend Shelly are murdered at the onset.

However, any future for The Crow franchise’s legacy always stood in the shadow of its late star, Lee, who died on the set in 1993 after shot with a prop gun. Similar to his father Bruce Lee, who died suddenly in 1973 in 1973 at 32, Brandon Lee promptly developed cult-icon status following his death, which fueled great interest in the movie. Adding to that was the pic’s milieu itself, a great nod to the goth and industrial alternative sensibilities of the 1990s prevalent in music at the time. Although it opened at $11.7M on May 14, 1994, the pic legged out to a great 4x multiple with $50.7M at the domestic box office. In 2024 inflated dollars based off an average ticket price of $12.61 this past weekend, per EntTelligence, and admissions for the original movie of 2.8 million, the 1994 Crow opened to $35.5M and legged to $152.9M based on domestic admissions of 12.1M. Wow. The film reportedly was made for $23M.

History is everything, and if there was any sign to avoid any attempt to remake The Crow, that clearly could be seen in the grosses and even distribution of the previous titles in the franchise. The 1996 sequel, The Crow: City of Angels, starring Vincent Perez and Mia Kirshner, opened to $9.7M and did less than 2x multiple at the domestic B.O. ending its run at $17.9M. Subsequent sequels The Crow: Salvation starring Kirsten Dunst in 2000 and The Crow: Wicked Prayer (2005), starring Edward Furlong, Dennis Hopper and Tara Reid, largely were home entertainment plays with limited theatrical grosses unreported. It was clear the fans weren’t biting then, why would they even be interested again?

The yearning to make a top-notch reboot of The Crow based on James O’Barr’s comic series goes back to 2008, with Ryan Kavanaugh’s Relativity Media at one point in talks to make the movie with Pressman; that initial plan foiled by a legal battle with the Weinstein Company, which retained global rights. But Relativity would bob in and out of the various iterations in development up until its bankruptcy. Big names such as Bradley Cooper, Mark Wahlberg, Channing Tatum — who, coincidentally, had his second bomb of the summer this weekend in Blink Twice — Ryan Gosling, Jack Huston, Luke Evans and even Bill’s brother Alexander Skarsgård circled the role of protagonist Eric Draven. The most recent iteration prior to the Sanders’ version had The Nun‘s Corin Hardy attached to direct and Jason Momoa starring. Both would exit at the same time. Hardy posted on social that he had creative differences with The Crow rights holder, producer Samuel Hadida (who passed in November 2018). The latest version with Sanders directing came together during the first half of 2022, with production commencing in July that year in Prague.

But complications ensued — chiefly, I’m told, the filmmaker and producers did not see eye-to-eye. The pic’s legendary producer Edward Pressman died as the film was being assembled, with his son Sam Pressman serving as EP. When the production was looking to do a pickup shoot last spring, the writers strike hit. Lionsgate Motion Picture Group Chair Adam Fogelson had a great working relationship with Sanders during his Universal brass days on Snow White and the Huntsmen ($397M worldwide) and rolled the dice on taking North American right; a good chunk of the pic’s production cost funded via foreign sales sold out via FilmNation.

RELATED: Edward Pressman: Appreciation For The Rebel In A Bow Tie By Alessandro Camon 

Furthermore, Lionsgate had a good working relationship with Skarsgård from John Wick: Chapter 4 and the Roadside Attractions co-acquisition Boy Kills World. The latest Crow originally was scheduled on June 7 but had to move when Bad Boys: Ride or Die drove onto the date. No bother, that early-summer release would have incurred the studio some significant post-production rush charges, which were avoided. Lionsgate promoted the movie during its CinemaCon presentation film as the studio doesn’t orphan its non-homemade titles.

However, the launch of the first trailer and its amassing of dislikes received public attention from the original Crow director Alex Proyas — his protests providing zero favors to the pic.

When a photo dropped in February if Skarsgård and FKA twigs from the film, Proyas snarked on social, “Eric Draven’s having a bad hair day. Next reboot please.”

He soon followed that up with a Facebook post that read: “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.”

From there, bad word-of-mouth spread like wildfire up until opening. Social media analytics corp RelishMix reported that The Crow had an online universe reach across TikTok, Facebook, X, YouTube and Instagram at 76.7M — 45% under the action-horror norm.

Observed RelishMix: “Negative convo on The Crow touches ordinary comparative notes with ‘disappointment’ toward the new adaptation and ‘disrespect’ toward the original. Fans express strong attachments to Brandon Lee’s iconic portrayal and are disappointed by the casting choices and perceived tonal shifts in the remake: ‘The original had a certain feeling, a certain atmosphere, I just don’t think this is hitting in the same way as the old one did.'”

Wall Street Journal‘s Kyle Smith astutely opined that the latest rendition was at a “slow, tortured pace” and a “ghoulish reworking of Groundhog Day.”

Smith further expounded: “Mr. Sanders has removed almost all of the trashy fun from the 1994 telling; the swaggering style and the confident glint in Lee’s eye have been displaced by nonstop gloom and misery. Is anguish a superpower? Though Mr. Skarsgård (who played the terrifying Pennywise in IT) is gravely charismatic and FKA twigs is touching, the dour, depressing dankness of Mr. Sanders’s vision makes The Crow a turkey.”

Says one insider connected to the reboot of The Crow and why it failed to connect with audiences: “Opera is hard. Opera is not about logic, it’s about emotion.”

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