While the summer movie season has been generally strong for the last couple of months, this past weekend was a bumpy ride so far as new releases were concerned. MGM’s “Blink Twice,” the feature directorial debut of Zoe Kravitz, did well enough for itself with a $7.3 million domestic start. Unfortunately for Lionsgate, the long-gestating “The Crow” remake didn’t fare nearly as well, to put it mildly. The new adaptation of James O’Barr’s graphic novel of the same name had nothing shy of a disastrous start to its box office run.
Director Rupert Sanders’ “The Crow” took in an estimated $4.6 million on its opening weekend, placing at number eight on the domestic charts. That was just barely above “Despicable Me 4” ($4.4 million), a movie that has been in theaters for going on two months. It also failed to gross more than the “Coraline” 15th anniversary re-release ($5 million), which is on its second weekend. Not only was this well below already low projections, it was less than half of what the original “Crow” made on its opening weekend in 1994, as that version opened to $11.7 million in its day.
What went wrong here? How did the producers miss the mark so badly? We’re going to go over the biggest reasons that “The Crow” failed to fly high at the box office. Let’s get into it.
The reasons are:
- The Crow failed to impress critics and audiences
- The Crow’s competition didn’t help matters
- The stench of development hell surrounding The Crow lingers
- The Crow franchise has been dead for years
- The Crow was another reboot nobody asked for
- It was very bad
There are different types of bad movies. There are those that find an unintended audience after the fact, reframing them as sources of amusement to be ridiculed, those that are simply too dull to be thought of ever again and then there are those that are made with such staggering incompetence that they barely even exist. The latter category is the one that I find hardest to endure, films such as The Snowman (a head-scratchingly awful thriller that was technically unfinished yet still released) veering from bad to refund-level unwatchable.
It was no real surprise that a tortured update of 1994’s cursed goth revenge thriller The Crow would be a misfire – it’s been in development since 2008 with multiple directors and actors attached ever since – but it’s genuinely startling just how utterly wretched the finished product is and how unfit it is for a wide release. Filmed two years ago and dumped on a low-expectation late summer weekend, The Crow 2.0 is a total, head-in-hands disaster, incoherently plotted and sloppily made, destined to join the annals of the very worst and most pointless remakes ever made.
I have no idea; I haven’t seen it. But the initial reports aren’t great.
it’s genuinely startling just how utterly wretched the finished product is and how unfit it is for a wide release […] incoherently plotted and sloppily made
I have seen it, and can tell you this review is sensationalized for views.
It’s not remotely that bad. In fact I’d say it’s the opposite of incoherently plotted. The plot is overly coherent. I think it would benefit from some more ambiguity and mystery.
And it’s not at all sloppily made. The cinematography, set design, and general production, are easily average. Even quite good at times.
The story is it’s biggest weakness. It’s not an adaptation. It’s more like “Inspired By”. And none of the story changes improve anything. Some hurt things quite a bit.
