The 2024 Crow Remake May Not Top The Original's Box Office Opening From 30 Years Ago

After years (and years) of waiting, "The Crow" remake is finally heading our way next weekend. Hailing from Lionsgate and director Rupert Sanders ("Snow White and the Huntsman"), this one will help close out the summer movie season with an R-rated bang. The question is, will this be a loud bang or a rather muted bang? Unfortunately for all involved, it's almost certainly going to be closer to the latter. This crow is not going to fly very high, it seems.

The long-awaited reimagining of James O'Barr's graphic novel is looking at an opening weekend in the $7.5 to $11 million range, per Box Office Theory. That's not great for a movie with a production budget in the $50 million range. Granted, that's cheap for an R-rated comic book movie. Nevertheless, it's going to have a long way to go to get anywhere near profitability, even on the high end of those estimates. If it comes in on the low end? It's going to be exceptionally tough sledding.

Rather remarkably, the original version of "The Crow" from 1994 opened to $11.7 million. That film finished with just over $50 million domestically. As it stands, the remake is poised to fall short of that opening number, and that doesn't even account for inflation. At the very least, it's not going to be a bomb for the record books like "Borderlands" has been for Lionsgate thus far.

Much of this could come down to the reception. Trailers for "The Crow" have hyped up the R-rated, "John Wick" influenced action. That said, the marketing clearly hasn't done a lot to juice the interest of general moviegoers. Word of mouth buzz could be the thing to bring those opening weekend numbers higher. If this is another situation where critics and audiences are underwhelmed, this may become the latest misfire for Lionsgate, making it a long summer for the studio.

Billed as a "modern reimagining" of the graphic novel, the film centers on soulmates Eric (Bill Skarsgård) and Shelly (FKA Twigs), who are brutally murdered one night. Eric is then given the chance to save his true love by sacrificing himself and sets out on a merciless path of revenge on their killers. Danny Huston ("X-Men Origins: Wolverine"), Isabella Wei ("1899"), Laura Birn ("Foundation"), Sami Bouajila ("Ganglands"), and Jordan Bolger ("The Woman King") also star.

For what it's worth, this remake spent years in development hell, with various actors and directors coming and going during that time. In 2018, a version of "The Crow" directed by Corin Hardy starring Aquaman himself, Jason Momoa, got this close to happening before the plug was pulled at the last second. It's been one heck of a journey, to say the very least of it. Whether or not that journey will be worth it once the train arrives at the station? It's tough to say, but the early indications suggest maybe not.

R-rated comic book films are not taboo as they once were, though. Movies like "Deadpool" and "Joker" have more than proved PG-13 isn't a must in this arena. To that end, "Deadpool & Wolverine" recently joined the $1 billion club, becoming the second-biggest movie of the year behind only "Inside Out 2." Come what may, we can't blame the R rating here. Truth be told, it might just be a lot of competition in that space, with "Alien: Romulus" also in theaters to take up some of the oxygen in the room. There is, of course, a chance that overseas audiences will turn out in larger numbers than those in North America. But hinging a film's success on an outsized international run is never a great sign, historically speaking.

"The Crow" hits theaters on August 23, 2024.