the crow 2

When James O’Barr was originally shopping around a pitch for a sequel to ‘The Crow‘ it seems like we had almost gotten a supernatural version of Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Kill Bill’ years before his releasing of it. The general idea followed a bride at the alter getting married and is killed before true love can bloom. Death doesn’t become her though, and she comes back with a vengeance as the new Crow as we see her getting revenge on those who had taken her life. The original pitch had the film being titled ‘The Crow: The Bride’ sounds like it would have been a lot more fun to watch than the drivel which we ended up getting. Not only that, but it would have given us a strong female lead and be the perfect excuse not to try and give us a pale imitation of the late and great Brandon Lee.

Not only that, but it was somewhat based on a true story! Here is what O’Barr has to say about it:

“My intention was to take it to a completely different direction. So I wrote a story that was a based on a little incident that happened in Chicago about a woman who was killed at her wedding. I remember reading it in the paper and it was just a horrible tragedy. Some Irish gangsters tried to rob a main perish in Chicago where they held the collections, and they got lost coming down. They ended up in the middle of a wedding and one of the bride’s maid’s boyfriend, in the audience, was a cop and a big shoot out started, church burnt down and 13 people were killed.”

Imagine a new Crow clad in a wedding dress going on a killing spree against the mob. The studio was against it at the time and sadly because of Miramax’s decision we ended up with a horrible flop. Honestly, with all of the similarities O’Barr was pretty sure that Miramax had taken the story and given it to Tarantino to make into his own:

“It was the end of ’95 and about 4 or 5 years later this movie Kill Bill comes out and I’m sitting in the theater like — you know that meme with the guy? This looks vaguely familiar! Mine didn’t have any of the Kung-Fu nonsense. I mean it’s the exact same story. They paid for it, so they had the right to do whatever they wanna’ do with it.”

There are enough similarities to make you wonder, though enough differences to quickly make the case that the two weren’t too alike outside of the bride returning for vengeance. I think the main reason it feels doubtful that Tarantino didn’t use this initial script as inspiration is that he always loves to namedrop where his ideas come from.

Maybe ‘The Crow: Reborn‘ will do the franchise justice in the first film since the original which would be good but with years of delays any hope that the studio is still on track with this one doesn’t feel likely.

Do you wish that ‘The Crow: The Bride’ had found its way into production and onto the big screen? How big of a mistake did Miramax make in passing on this one? Could it be a secret inspiration for the ‘Kill Bill’ films? Share your thoughts below!