Until very recently, the long-gestated remake of the 1994 cult hit "The Crow" looked to all intents and purposes like it was dead and buried, with Relativity Media and The Weinstein Company locked in a legal battle over the distribution rights to any potential reboot. But like it’s titular hero "The Crow" seems unable to stay dead for very long, with the two companies settling amicably out of court a few days ago and agreeing to work together on the picture.
And they’ve wasted no time in getting the ball rolling again by swiftly signing up a new writer and director. A Nick Cave script had previously been abandoned before "Watchmen" scribe Alex Tse was hired (while the legal proceedings were still active), but now it appears that Jesse Wigutow will pen a script, which will be directed by F. Javier Gutierez.
A relatively unknown quantity, Wigutow has scripts in the works with HBO, Summit, and Universal, while his only previously produced script was 2003’s poorly received "It Runs In The Family" starring Michael and Kirk Douglas. Gutierez, meanwhile, impressed many with his feature debut, "Before the Fall," and reportedly has a cult following in his native Spain for his work in the fantasy genre.
Gutierez replaces fellow Spaniard Juan Carlos Fresnadillo who bizarrely had Bradley Cooper attached to the lead role, and at the rate things are moving we wouldn’t be surprised if we were hearing who his replacement is, too, in the very near future. Channing Tatum and Mark Wahlberg had previously been loosely linked/offered the role, and if the latter were cast maybe we could expect a drastic new direction from Wigutow’s script. Let’s just say that if he were cast, there would be a lot more blood and it would be his attackers who would end up needing to be resurrected by a crow.
Whether anybody actually still gives a crap about a nearly 20-year-old franchise that has had pretty much all of its credibility eroded by three awful sequels is another matter, but it appears that both The Weinstein Co. and Relativity are determined to get it to theaters sooner rather than later.
