Why “The Crow” Flopped at the Box Office

Few expected that the 2024 “The Crow” remake would be a box office phenomenon. However, nobody thought it would do as poorly as it did over its domestic opening weekend. The reboot failed to take flight, with just a $4.6 million domestic debut. In the pantheon of superhero movies, “The Crow” opened just 5% more than the forgotten 1999 title “Black Mask” and beneath infamous box office bombs like “Supergirl.”

Staggeringly, “The Crow” even opened to roughly half the North American opening weekend of “Bloodshot.” That’s despite that 2020 superhero movie opening just as COVID-19 started driving audiences away from theaters. More folks were willing to risk getting COVID in March 2020 than see “The Crow” on opening weekend in August 2024 … that must sting.

When a movie like “The Crow” capsizes this badly at the box office, there’s never just one reason for the immense failure. There are always a slew of factors that inform the financial shortcomings of these would-be blockbusters. In the case of “The Crow,” a multitude of elements — ranging from a dismal marketing campaign to a poor release date to people’s reverence for the original “Crow” movie (among many other defects) — coalesced to create one of the biggest superhero movie bombs of the 21st century.

In mid-March 2024 (three months before the movie’s original release date), Lionsgate dropped the first trailer for “The Crow.” Instantly, the marketing campaign for this remake got off on the wrong foot. The moody trailer (set to a Post Malone/Ozzy Osbourne ditty) confirmed this remake would cover the same storytelling terrain of the original movie and emphasize lots of R-rated violence. Immediately, the press expressed disdain for the project, while the first trailer for the “Crow” remake secured over 91,000 dislikes a few days after its launch. It was a staggering turn of events that instantly created a grim aura over the production that would be difficult to evade.

In the months that followed, Lionsgate failed to improve the standing of “The Crow.” Part of that came from the inescapably small scale of the studio’s promotional campaign. The studio reportedly spent only $15 million on marketing the feature, just slightly over 10% of the promotional budget for “Deadpool and Wolverine.” The meager marketing spend meant that even seemingly no-brainer promotional tie-ins for “The Crow” went unexploited.

Most notably, the 2024 edition of the San Diego International Comic-Con featured no “The Crow” panel or photo opportunities. Even fellow August 2024 Lionsgate bomb “Borderlands” had a recreation of Moxxi’s Bar tied into SDCC. Nothing about Lionsgate’s “The Crow” marketing screamed confidence, especially when it came to the poorly-constructed trailers. That fatal facet translated into audiences giving the movie the cold shoulder.

When the idea of a “Crow” remake first emerged, Mark Wahlberg’s name was attached as a contender for the part. The “Boogie Nights” leading man didn’t last long in the role, but several other actors would quickly be eyeballed for the part. In fact, the titular role of “The Crow” became a revolving door that various leading men walked in and out of during the 2010s.

After Wahlberg, Bradley Cooper, Tom Hiddleston, and Jason Momoa, among many others, were connected to the part. The 1994 “Crow” was meant to launch Brandon Lee as a movie star; in a sharp contrast, the initial plan for the “Crow” remake was to merge the property with a red-hot leading man. In the end, Pennywise the Clown himself, Bill Skarsgård, got the role. While the two “It” movies were smash hits, Skarsgård himself would freely admit he’s not a box office draw. In fact, “The Crow” was the first time Skarsgård was top-billed on a theatrical wide-release movie.

Surrounding Skarsgård in the supporting cast was famous musician FKA Twigs (who’s had minimal exposure as an actor) and character actor Danny Huston. Few recognizable faces littered the rest of the cast. There was nobody in “The Crow” famous enough to inspire the sort of passionate audience interest to overcome all the negative mojo surrounding this remake. Opting for a cast of lesser-known performers helped seal the film’s grisly box office fate.

The very first rumblings of a straightforward “The Crow” remake came in 2008, just three years after the last direct-to-video sequel to the original film — “The Crow: Wicked Prayer” — hit the marketplace. At this point in time, “The Crow” was still relatively fresh on people’s minds. It was also an era when the superhero movie marketplace was still far from peak capacity. That’s a radically different pop culture landscape than the one that “The Crow” finally entered in August 2024.

By the time the remake opened, it had been over three decades since the original “Crow” premiered and nearly two decades since the last time a new “Crow” movie bowed. The iron hadn’t just cooled on the “Crow” brand name — it had gone arctic cold. That inescapable element of reality appeared to evade Lionsgate’s marketing team. The abysmal campaign for “The Crow” leaned too heavily on the pre-existing brand name, with many of the posters and TV spots merely establishing that a new “Crow” movie was on the horizon.

Some franchises can get away with simply leaning on a familiar logo, like the “Jurassic World” movies. Perhaps that promotional approach would have been enough back in 2011 or 2012, but a 2024 “Crow” remake needed to do more to get people’s attention given how much the franchise had fallen out of vogue.

There was a time when being an R-rated movie made you stand out in the PG-13-dominated summer moviegoing marketplace. Just look at summer 2013, when the R-rated “The Conjuring” distinguished itself in a sea of PG-13 hits like “Iron Man 3” and “Fast and Furious 6.” Summer 2024, meanwhile, has been packed to the gills with R-rated tentpoles. “Bad Boys: Ride or Die,” “Alien: Romulus,” and especially “Deadpool and Wolverine” have been among the biggest box office hits of the season. This meant that “The Crow” couldn’t promote itself as the one big bloody action movie in a season of “sanitized” family-friend fare. Instead, “The Crow” felt like more of the same to the unconverted.

More pressingly, the August 23 release date of “The Crow” put it in direct competition with summer 2024’s biggest R-rated movies. “Alien: Romulus” opened successfully just one week earlier, partially satisfying the public’s appetite for graphically violent chaos. The real fatal blow, though, was “Deadpool and Wolverine,” which topped the domestic box office despite being in its fifth week of release.

“The Crow” was always going to struggle to lure in audiences. That was especially challenging when it debuted into a marketplace where the more light-hearted and better-reviewed “Deadpool and Wolverine” also promised lots of R-rated superhero carnage. Moviegoers who love R-rated features have been overwhelmed with options in summer 2024, a scenario that helped doom “The Crow.”

The original 1994 “The Crow” has become an object of deep personal affection for many ’90s kids, and this cult following spans many different fanbases beyond just film and comic book geeks. For instance, the original movie is revered for its influence on the metal and punk music scenes. Meanwhile, folks growing up in the goth subcommunity were fond of the film for providing a rare gothic hero in an era of cinema that mostly used goths as a punchline. Then, of course, there’s the reverence for the film’s late star, Brandon Lee, who was accidentally shot and killed while filming “The Crow.” That tragedy has led many modern retrospectives of “The Crow” to appreciate Lee’s remarkable work in the title role.

Into all this fondness and deep personal connection to “The Crow” came the 2024 remake from director Rupert Sanders. Remakes are a dime a dozen in Hollywood, but something felt extra macabre about this reboot, given the material’s permanent intertwining with Lee’s personal life. It didn’t help that the marketing for the 2024 “Crow” made the new film look sanitized and mainstream, a sharp contrast to the way the original feature resonated deeply with grimy subcultures. This new “Crow” was supposed to ride familiarity with the original brand name to box office glory. Instead, people’s love for the original “Crow” just made selling a fresh vision an incredibly arduous uphill battle.