Once thought dead and buried, but revived by the burning, eternal love shared between the Weinsteins and Relativity Media, the remake of The Crow is again moving forward with a new director, new screenwriter, and new opportunity for showbiz blogs to again use resurrection or, better yet, bird-related metaphors like “take flight,” or “winging its way,” or “regurgitating into the waiting mouths of the young,” only one of which hasn’t been used all that much yet for some reason. Anyway, the latest director-writer pairing to take a stab at it will be Spanish horror director F. Javier Gutierrez, who had an underground hit with Before The Fall (Tres Dias), and screenwriter Jesse Wigutow, best known so far for his rewrites on films such as 8 Mile, Eragon, and The Ruins. They join the lineage of people who have passed through the project already—Stephen Norrington, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, even Nick Cave—and are probably having an awkward, Harvey Weinstein-chaperoned blind date pretty soon.
Right now it’s unclear whether any of the work of their predecessors will survive, or whether Gutierrez and Wigutow will come up with their own original idea based on an original idea that was already turned into four other original ideas, including one with Edward Furlong and Tara Reid. Also not clear yet is what they plan to do about casting. Although, with Paradise Lost on indefinite hiatus, it’s possible that Bradley Cooper could be convinced to ameliorate the loss of playing Lucifer by pouring his obsidian essence into the more mortal vessel of The Crow, either through the proper incantations or the promise of those protein bars he likes.