1. The Crow
Up until now, all the near-misses have been properties with decades of continuity. Surely, with a self-contained story like James OBarrs The Crow, its a lot harder to screw up. After all, its already packaged with a definitive beginning, middle and end, and you dont have a lot of other material that you have to worry about distilling. Easy-peasy, right? Right?
Wrong! For those who are unaware, The Crow was a revenge story written and drawn by OBarr in the 80s. It featured the story of Eric, a man who is killed along with his fiancée by a gang of thugs. Eric comes back from the dead, watched over by a mysterious crow, and proceeds to exact righteous vengeance. Although sometimes it gets a bit too full of itself, The Crow is a great story and its good material for a movie. So its not really a surprise that Hollywood took notice and optioned it for a film adaptation. Then, when sitting in a meeting with a bunch of studio executives, one of them sat up and announced his brilliant idea: turn it into a musical. Starring Michael Jackson. OBarr reportedly began laughing because he thought it was a joke. Then he realized he was the
only one
laughing. Everyone else looked at him like he was crazy. Apparently, they all thought this was a good way to adapt his story. OBarr would later say that he didnt understand why they would even try to adapt this book if they just wanted to twist it into something completely unrecognisable and take away all meaning it had. But OBarr was fortunate when director Alex Proyas and star Brandon Lee came onboard. They loved the original source material and put an end to this musical nonsense and made a faithful adaptation that stands as one of the best comic book movies ever made. Of course, once the first movie was finished, the studio executives would come up with other ways to drive The Crow franchise into the ground, but thats a story for another day.