EXCLUSIVE
The last we heard about Relativity Media's remake of "The Crow," producer Ed Pressman told MTV that an offer was out to a "major actor" and director Stephen Norrington ("Blade") had finished a "terrific" screenplay that would be set in two locations: "the southwest — the Mexico/Arizona area — and an urban [setting] — Detroit or Pittsburgh or something like that."
Well apparently Norrington's take wasn't quite "terrific" enough, as Pressman recently told TheWrap that none other than iconic musician and acclaimed screenwriter Nick Cave has come on to rewrite the script.
Hiring Cave to rewrite Norrington's script is a bold move, but it may prove to be worth it in the long run, as Cave may be the perfect choice to help resurrect the fading franchise.
He made his screenwriting debut with John Hillcoat's 1988 prison drama "Ghosts … of the Civil Dead," but what really has this lifelong "Crow" fan excited is Cave's impressive work on Hillcoat's gritty Australian Western "The Proposition," which was awesome.
While Cave's record label may not like to publicize his other career as a successful screenwriter, there's no doubt that he is in major demand, especially after having been named one of Variety's 10 Screenwriters to Watch in 2006.
Last year, it was announced that Cave had written "The Promised Land," an adaptation of Matt Bondurant's bootlegging novel "The Wettest County in the World." Hillcoat would once again direct, and Shia LaBeouf was attached to star. There were reports that the project had "fallen apart" earlier this year but it seems like the film is still in development at Douglas Wick and Lucy Fisher's Red Wagon Entertainment.
More recently, actor Andy Serkis revealed that he and Cave are planning a motion-capture version of "The Threepenny Opera." Although it's unclear whether Cave will be writing the screenplay or simply contributing music for the feature adaptation of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's classic 1928 musical/operetta, it's nonetheless an ambitious project that shows what kind of material Cave is interested in.
Several years ago, Variety reported that Cave and Hillcoat were collaborating on "Death of a Ladies' Man," an English tragicomedy named after the Leonard Cohen song that was set to star "The Proposition's" Ray Winstone as a sex addicted salesman who is forced to take his young son on the road with him after his wife commits suicide.
And before that, Russell Crowe asked Cave to write a sequel to "Gladiator," which would have ended with "a 20-minute war sequence that ended up in Vietnam, and then in a toilet in the Pentagon, with [Crowe] as this rage-fueled eternal warrior." Unfortunately, the studio rejected the script, as it proved impossible to finance.
Expect an announcement in the coming weeks about who will land the coveted role of Eric Draven in the reconceptualized remake of "The Crow," which will feature the titular bird as more of a full-fledged character than in Alex Proyas' 1994 original.
Cave is represented by United Agents in the U.K.
