Failure to Launch

This last weekend The Crow ‘24 came out. For those not born in the 1980s/1990s, or who haven’t read every single article on this site, The Crow was a moody and atmospheric superhero revenge film that starred Brandon Lee in, tragically, his last role. He was killed in an accident involving prop guns while filming and the movie had to be reworked and restaged so that it could be completed without its lead star. The resulting film was a solid little success, bringing in $94 Mil on its tiny $23 Mil budget, and while some of that could have been from audiences curious to see what Lee’s final performance was like, at least a few people actually cared for the cool, Gothic film.

It’s also worth mentioning that before that movie there was the original comic that inspired it all. The book, also called The Crow, was written by James O’Barr. The book was the author's way of dealing with the death of his fiancee due to a drunk driver. That tragic story has been overshadowed by the tragedy on set for the 1994 film, but whatever version of the story you prefer, the legacy of the series has certainly been tarnished by all the sequels that have come out since.

After 1994, the film franchise has struggled to find anything near the success of that original movie. Direct sequel, The Crow: City of Angels, was not just a bad movie but an underperformer at the Box Office, only bringing in a fraction of the original’s take (a mere $25.3 Mil), while The Crow: Salvation and The Crow: Wicked Prayer both went direct-to-video (with only tiny, limited theatrical releases). In fact, of all the continuing media to come out, the most successful was the Canadian-produced The Crow: Stairway to Heaven, a well received TV series that functionally acted as a remake of the first movie. Naturally, since it was well liked, it was canceled after a single season. This series is cursed.

All of this is a long-form way of saying, “considering everything that came before, does anyone really want or need a new The Crow movie? The fanbase for this series has wandered off, and anyone that wants to relive the feelings they had when they first watched the Brandon Lee-starring 1994 original probably owns the movie and can watch it when they want. After 15 years of development hell (that’s how long this remake has been in production), one has to wonder just who would want to go to this new, weird, emo version of The Crow.

Hell, I’m the kind of person that would go to see this film (since I’ll watch and write about anything) and I didn’t even bother hitting the theater for it. The trailer for it was uninspired and there didn’t seem to be any real buzz building for it. This was the kind of movie that probably sounded good on paper 15 years ago, when fans were still itching for a good sequel to the original movie. But 30 years later? This just doesn’t sound like a good proposition at all.

That opinion seems to bear out, too, as its opening weekend was a complete disaster for The Crow ‘24. Produced on a budget of $50 Mil (so over double what the original cost, but considering inflation and 30 years between the films, that sounds close to equivalent), the film came out in 6th place at the Box Office, making a pathetic $4.6 Mil. People are already calling it the biggest bomb of 2024 and, well, that might just be true. Certainly if you go just by sheer Box Office numbers for Hollywood Blockbusters, this is nothing short of a complete disaster. But is it the biggest bomb this year? Has it beaten Borderlands? Let’s run the numbers and see.

Now, I’m not here to judge the film on content. Other people have watched the film and said it was awful, and I’ll likely do the same once it hits a second-run theater or I buy it on Blu-Ray (because, let’s face it, I eventually buy everything), but since I haven’t seen it I’m not going to say, “well, this film was clearly terrible and that makes it unequivocally worse.” I don’t know how it was, but I can do a straight comparison of numbers, with a bit of math, so we can see just how big a bomb this was and, by any metric, yeah, it’s a total wreck.

In its opening, weekend, Borderlands debuted at #4, coming in far behind the dominating force of Deadpool & Wolverine. It was meant to be a big, splashy, superhero action film but, for whatever reason, no one came to see the film. It was a combination of bad trailers, bad word-of-mouth, and a fanbase that was already tired of the property. After a couple of weeks in theaters, the film has managed a sad $24.2 Mil, with $8..8 made during its opening weekend. All told, the film is expected to lose $80 to $100 Mil, not counting advertising costs, putting production studio Lionsgate deeply in the hole for the film.

When we run the numbers, a straight head-to-head comparison says $4.6 Mil from The Crow is smaller than the $8.8 Mil from Borderlands, although the budgets are different so that isn’t the fairest comparison. More apt is to say that at twice the budget (or more) $8.8 for Borderlands is equivalent to (at least) $9.2 for The Crow. Technically that puts The Crow ahead. However, we also have to factor in future hauls. Word-of-mouth for The Crow is bad right now, and likely isn’t going to improve. And the smaller the film, the harder it is for it to get traction without audiences saying good things about it. So while, three weeks later, Borderlands has managed to triple (more or less) its opening weekend take, I don’t think we can expect the same kind of legs for The Crow. In fact, considering how bad this opening weekend is, it’s hard to know if The Crow will even be in theaters much longer past this week. It crashed, and crashed hard.

Worse, the $50 Mil budget doesn’t even take into account how much was spent trying to develop this film (and all previous sequel iterations before they settled on this version). 15 years is a long time, and a lot of money was spent on scripts, on directors, no new scripts, on new directors, on signing stars and then watching their contrasts expire. Realistically that $50 Mil could be much, much higher, maybe at least $75 Mil, so who knows just how realistic the comparisons we could make really are.

Finally, let’s look at it from the perspective of the fandom. If you were a fan 15 years ago, it’s hard to know if you even stuck around this long for this film. If you did, to then get slapped in the face by (what is, by all accounts) a bad movie has to feel like a real shot (to the face). The studios spent 15 years, and wasted so much fan enthusiasm for… this? Really. While no one liked the Borderlands film it didn’t take 15 years to create that disaster. Somehow, after all this time, the studio behind The Crow ‘24 could even make a good enough film to entertain the hardest fans that were still interested?

And looking at the production notes, that studio was… oh. Lionsgate. So now they have both of the biggest bombs of 2024 so far. Wow. You know, if I was an executive working at that studio, I might just be brushing up my resume and thinking about moving on. Lionsgate isn’t one of the big studios and it would be hard for them to absorb one big failure of a film. To have two of them, back to back, could well spell the beginning of the end for that production house. Certainly I’d expect to see them scaling back their films and having a “rethink about our production slate.” Lionsgate of 2025, I’d bet, will look very different from Lionsgate of 2024.

Regardless, The Crow ‘24 seems like the rightful film to crown the biggest flop of 2024. At least so far, anyway. There’s still time for something else (maybe another Lionsgate film) to come out and steal the crown away. But this deep into the Summer season, with only a few more blockbusters left before we head into the smaller, Academy contention season, that feels less and less likely.

Put another way: you did it, Lionsgate! You’re number one, and number two. They don’t give out prizes for that, though. Just pink slips.