I vividly remember going to see The Crow on the day it came out in 1994. I was in college and the first show at 8:00 was sold out so we bought tickets to the next one at 10:00 or so, went out to a bar and waited around until we could watch it. A girlfriend of mine was obsessed with Lee and saw it several times in the theater and I’m pretty sure I went to see it again with her. I couldn’t tell you too much about the plot without consulting Wiki because I haven’t watched it since, but even back then the lore of Brandon Lee’s death while making the film was the stuff of legend. You couldn’t make up a sadder and more ironic story of how Lee was killed accidentally during a scene where his character is shot.

So you would think that The Crow would remain as a tribute to Lee (sequels aside) and that no one would dare to disrespect his memory by churning out a pale remake, but you would be wrong. The movie is being remade and Bradley “the milk ain’t clean” Cooper is set to star, according to E!. This angers me on many levels, and I lost touch with that girlfriend in college but I know her 20 year-old self is throwing stuff against the wall and listening to Joy Division loud enough for her dad to bang on the ceiling.

Interesting footsteps for Bradley Cooper to want to follow in.

A source confirms to E! News that the Limitless star is in talks to star in a remake of the 1994 revenge thriller The Crow, based on a cult-favorite comic book series but sadly far more notable for the fact that 28-year-old star Brandon Lee was killed during filming.

The story centers on a rock musician who is murdered along with his fiancée and, through supernatural forces, comes back to life to dispatch the evildoers in increasingly creative ways.

Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (28 Weeks Later) is on board to direct.

A critical and box-office hit that featured some fierce performances, the 1994 original would have been a gut-wrencher even without the back story: Lee died on The Crow’s North Carolina set in 1993 when a blank cartridge was fired in his direction and a piece of bullet somehow flew out along with it, hitting him in the abdomen. The fragment lodged in his spine and he died of his injuries at a nearby hospital.

Director Alex Proyas had to rewrite various scenes that hadn’t been completed yet and had to ramp up the special effects to place Lee in the posthumously shot scenes.

Two uneventful sequels were made and, it goes without saying, we hope to not hear one word from the set of the remake until the entire movie is in the can.

[From E! Online]

This is why people hate Hollywood. It’s douche moves like this that make the entire industry seem like those zombies that are so popular now. With all the awesome supernatural books, comics and surely screenplays out there you would think that someone would greenlight a new concept that also has the potential to make bank at the box office. Why bother when all they have to do is copy something that’s already been done? It doesn’t even matter if the lead actor was killed on set. Why don’t they remake Poltergeist? Like not a sequel, the original one? The soulless people who make films don’t seem to give a sh*t if a film has bad mojo as long as they make some cash.

Crow photo from BrandonLee.eu. Other photos credit: WENN. Cooper is shown on Spanish television on 3/31/11