On Thursday, the seemingly never-ending saga of the Crow remake continued to never-end, capping off a decade of struggles with director Corin Hardy and star Jason Momoa dropping out just as Sony pulled its support. That was naturally a crushing blow to The Crow, so the movie is effectively now dead until a different studio comes along with some money and convinces another director and star to sign onto what is clearly a cursed project.
Since then, Hardy has offered some details about why he decided to leave The Crow, posting on Instagram that he knew going in how difficult the remake would be—not just because of how many people love Alex Proyas’ original but because he also loves that first movie. Hardy says he “poured everything [he] had” into The Crow for the last three and a half years in hopes of making “something which honored what The Crow stood for,” noting the legacies of Proyas’ movie, James O’barr’s original comic, and original Crow star Brandon Lee (who died in an on-set accident). He says he, Momoa, and the rest of the crew came “SO close” to making something he “could be proud of” as “an obsessive fan,” but “when you love something so much, you have to make hard decisions.”
We noted when Sony backed out that part of the issue was rights older Samuel Hadida, who couldn’t work out a deal that the studio was happy with, so the implication in Hardy’s post is that he couldn’t get the support he needed in order to make the movie he wanted to make. You can see the Instagram post, which includes a photo of Momoa in the Crow makeup, up above.