After the glistening turd that was The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, I’m sure a lot of you would be happy never to hear from director Stephen Norrington again. I would have thought I’d feel the same way, until I read the news that he’d be writing and directing a new take on The Crow for Relativity Media. Maybe it’s Variety’s coverage. The piece suggests Norrington hated that experience as much as we did, and that it led him to years away from the screen, which he spent writing and sculpting. Sounds enough like penance to me, and after making a film like Gentlemen, I’d expect anyone to be intensely critical of how their next project proceeded.
The trade also says that Norrington’s Crow, still based on Jim O’Barr’s original comics, will be more intensely realistic, “almost documentary-style”. That’ll raise hackles on those who love the original Proyas film and, in all likelihood, on those who don’t like the first film but love the comics. I’m in neither camp; the comics and films mean nothing to me. I can see the argument against the realistic tone — besides being part of a deserved resistance to the Dark Knight-ization of superhero movies, the Crow always had that goth/operatic streak, without which he’s just a post-Columbine weirdo in a trench coat. (The right question now is ‘yeah, so how was Norrington’s Blade any different?’)
But let’s see if this deal actually goes through (Norrington was on the Clash of the Titans re-do, remember, before that deal fell apart) and then who is cast. Brandon Lee’s shadow is long, for obvious reasons, but maybe we’ll get a new goth star out of the deal.