News regarding Stephen Norrington's remake of The Crow broke a three month silence on Tuesday with the announcement that Mark Wahlberg had been offered the lead role that Brandon Lee famously portrayed in the 1994 Alex Proyas film. While it seemed that nobody cared for this bit of news, one person left unfazed was Norrington. But why would a director not care about who is cast in his movie? Because it's no longer his movie.
Following the news about Wahlberg, Comics2Film contacted the director for his thoughts and he responded by saying, "I don't know about that story but I can tell you I'm no longer involved with The Crow." Attached to the project since December 2008, Norrington decided to leave when the studio brought in star who claimed to really want to work with Norrington, but demanded that the script, written by Norrington and Nick Cave, be completely changed. The director didn't say who the star was, but the site inferred that he was not talking about Wahlberg. In fact, Norrington even said that there could be a way for Wahlberg to make the movie work "if they take a gritty blue-collar approach."
Needless to say, without a director or a script, the future of the project is merely swinging in the breeze. It should be noted, however, that Norrington didn't mention when he left the production, meaning that Relativity Media may have already found someone else to take the helm. Regardless, I think I speak for most when I say that I hope that this project is dead in the water.
