The reboot of The Crow is one of those projects you suspect you just heard about in a weird dream. Is it actually happening? Is Jason Momoa still playing Eric? Is this actually a thing, or did your mind play tricks on you last night?
No, it’s real. The Crow is actually happening, and it’s coming out in theaters in just a few months.
There’s even a very real trailer
After dropping a brief tease yesterday, Lionsgate has now released the first full trailer for The Crow, which you can feast your eyes on above. Its YouTube description reads:
“Soulmates Eric Draven (Skarsgård) and Shelly Webster (FKA twigs) are brutally murdered when the demons of her dark past catch up with them. 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.”
So. A bloody revenge fantasy, anchored by a tragic love story. It seems pretty cool—although fans of the original will notice that one major character seems to have been written out of the story. Can The Crow keep its emotional heart without her?
From development hell to an actual, real movie
’90s kids, of course, know The Crow as the moody graphic novel adaptation starring Brandon Lee as Eric. In the original film, Eric and his fiancée Shelly are murdered, and Eric is brought back to life by a mystical crow so that he can get revenge on their murderers. Tragedy struck the project when Lee was killed by a faulty prop gun near the end of filming.
After the film and its three sequels came out, various producers tried to get a reboot going, but the project never got off the ground. Various actors, including Ryan Gosling and Tom Hiddleston, were reportedly tapped to play Eric, until Jason Momoa signed on in 2016. However, Momoa soon left the project, saying that he’d be “ready when it’s right.”
Now, though, the film is finally on its way.
Who’s in the cast of The Crow?
Bill Skarsgård, known for playing Pennywise the Clown in It, is playing the newest incarnation of Eric, with FKA Twigs playing Shelly and Isabella Wei playing a character named Zadie. Danny Huston plays one of Shelly and Eric’s murderers.
The original The Crow had a character named Sarah: a child who was friends with Eric and Shelly, and witnessed Eric’s return from the dead. However, Sarah doesn’t seem to appear in the adaptation.
Laura Birn (Foundation), Sami Bouajila (Days of Glory), and Jordan Bolger (Peaky Blinders) have also been cast in undisclosed roles.
In February, Vanity Fair released a first look at Skarsgård as Eric.
What’s the plot of The Crow?
It looks like the plot of the reboot will remain more or less faithful to the original, with Eric coming back from the dead to get revenge on his and Shelly’s killers. Director Rupert Sanders told Vanity Fair that “What drew me to this was the opportunity to make a dark romance, something that dealt with loss, grief, and the ethereal veil between life and death and reaching through that.”
Sanders also told Vanity Fair that he’s interested in giving his version of the story more of a “balance between light and dark,” so it’s possible that we’ll see more of Eric and Shelly’s romance before their deaths.
When is The Crow coming out?
The Crow will hit theaters on June 7, 2024. Get ready for some supernatural violence and a haunted love story—that hopefully does justice to the original.
(featured image: Larry Horricks for Lionsgate)
