A Boy and His Bird News reports updates on the fourth The Crow movie, starring David Boreanaz (“Angel”, “Buffy, The Vampire Slayer”), Tara Reed (My Boss’s Daughter), and David Ortiz (“Miss Match”), is the fourth dark fantasy film springing from James O’Barr’s graphic novel series, “The Crow.”
Did you know there were already three films? Most people don’t realize the third was produced and released.
Beginning with the original, The Crow, starring Brandon Lee, who perished while shooting the final scenes of the film, the over-done The Crow: City of Angels failed to approach the appeal and maturity of the first film. The third film, The Crow: Salvation, went straight to cable after test screenings revealed it to be, um, crap. While I wouldn’t say it was crap per se, it did suck. Fred Ward (The Adventures of Remo Williams) is in it, if that helps you picture the quality of the film.
In addition to the three produced films there have been six excellent novelizations by different authors, a horrible television series entitled “The Crow: Stairway To Heaven” and starring B‑movie-sinker Mark DeCoscas. There also remains scrapped fifth The Crow film about a gansta rapper and an animated series that is experiencing more setbacks than the original X‑Men cartoon.
All continues to go well with the post production of “The Crow: Wicked Prayer”. Confidence is still high in regard to a theatrical release, but it is too early to know for sure which direction Dimension will go. Fans have asked about promotion shots, news items, etc. Now that the film has passed into the post production phase, all of those types of things are under the control of the Miramax/Dimension promotion department. Do not expect to see anything until closer to the time that the film is due out.
Ya know… If anybody in Hollywood paid any attention to anything, they might realize something important about the genearl public and how they respond to original concept movies and how poeerly sequels do.
Take Highlander.
One of the best concept films ever made. Then Hollywood said, wow… make a sequel!
That was bad because, the first film had a definite ending (i.e. There can be Only One and he won the final fight).
The same is true of the Crow. Come on producer/writer idiots! The hero only came back to life, to exact revenge for his one true love in life. As I recall, he did that in the first movie. Take a hint from Highlander 2, an even poorer acting job by Mario Van Peebles in Highlander 3, a very bad twist to the tale in the creation of Highlander the series and its bastard creation off shoot which I can’t even stomach enough to remember the name of, and learn a lesson.
Unless the first movie has an obvious plot hole that allows it to be sequeled or branched and expanded upon (i.e Star Wars or the Indiana Jones trilogy) leave the damn bird alone.
I somewhat agree with you on the sequels. Highlander had a great first movie but the two that followed sucked. But the last one that was made Highlander: endgame I thought was excelent. It didn’t exactly make sense considering it was suppose to end after the first movie, but I still thought that it was a great movie if you ignore the fact that it had previous movies.
Agreed, the Highlander franchise sucked after the first one.
The Crow, however, is always someone new each time. That’s the concept. You should check out the graphic novels but especially the novels. They’re excellent.
And a television series that was contrary to most of the film. I’m a big believer in continuity. Maybe it comes from being a writer myself. I just hate to see laziness for the sake of making a buck.