James O’Barr - the creator of The Crow graphic novel - has revealed his unused pitch for a sequel to the 1994 movie adaptation. The Crow is considered one of the best comic book films of the nineties, thanks to its Gothic visuals, exciting action scenes, and the charismatic performance by star Brandon Lee. Tragically, the young actor was killed during filming in an onset accident involving a prop gun.

The Crow later became a franchise with three sequels, a TV series and even a video game. The first sequel - The Crow: City Of Angels - featured a new character played by Vincent Perez, returning to life to avenge the death of his son. Despite director Tim Pope setting out to make a sequel that set itself apart from the original, the producers hated his first cut and ordered a drastic re-edit to make it closer in tone to the first movie. The end result was a confused mess with choppy editing; fans of The Crow hated it and the director disowned it.

Related: The Crow Reboot Moving Forward At Sony

The Crow’s creator James O’Barr has now revealed his cool pitch for the sequel - and why it went nowhere. O’Barr was speaking about the pitch at the Los Angeles Comic Con (via Screen Geek) and explained the idea came from an old news story about a woman who was killed during her wedding, when a gunfight suddenly erupted between cops and gangsters:

“That story always stuck with me and that day is supposed to be the happiest day in someone’s life and it couldn’t get more tragic than that. So my idea was “Okay, what if I take that scenario and call it The Crow: The Bride?” and she comes back. It was super cool, she’s still wearing her wedding dress with barb wire and nails in her head.”

Despite the promising idea, O’Barr found the studio wasn’t interested in a gender-flipped sequel:

I wrote out a treatment which is 16 pages, it tells you every plot point and tells you everything in the story, and they paid me for it. It was like $10,000, they said “Nah, we can’t make this. First of all, no one is going to see an action movie with a female lead.” And I was like ”If you do it right, it doesn’t matter if it’s about gender. It just has to be handled right.” They declined and so, there’s the script and I did a bunch of illustrations for it as well and they threw on the shelves at Miramax.

O’Barr also noted his idea has certain similarities to Kill Bill, which Miramax produced years later. It’s a shame this concept wasn’t used, since The Crow: City Of Angels felt like a hollow remake of the first movie. The other sequels - which went straight to DVD - were even worse.

In news that should be welcome to fans of The Crow, O’Barr will be heavily involved with the forthcoming remake. This new take on the story has been trapped in development hell for years, with actors like Bradley Cooper, Luke Evans, and Jack Huston being attached at different times to the lead. After years of delays, the movie is seemingly moving ahead with pre-production now. While it hasn’t been officially confirmed, it appears Corin Hardy will direct and Justice League's Jason Momoa will play the lead.

NEXT: The Crow Reboot Filming In 2018?

There’s no release date set for The Crow at this time, but we’ll keep you updated when more information comes in.

Source: Screen Geek