Production
After the success of The Crow, Miramax commissioned a sequel, and production began in 1995. The Weinstein Brothers offered directing duties to Tim Pope on the basis of his work on a short film, Phone, he made in 1991. David S. Goyer was brought on to write the script. Wanting to avoid comparisons with the first movie and Brandon Lee, Goyer originally intended to have the character of Sarah return as a female crow. Another idea was to set the story in 19th-century England. Eventually, it was decided the story would be centred around two brothers who are murdered in Los Angeles. In that script, Ashe and Danny were the brothers, with Ashe being the one brought back to avenge their deaths. The original script also featured Sarah, Grange and Top Dollar, the last two resurrected to fight Ashe. Goyer was unhappy about reviving Grange and Top Dollar and rewrote the script removing them entirely. Alex McDowell, who worked on the previous movie and had also worked with Tim Pope on music videos, was brought back as production designer and both aimed to give the movie a distinguished look. McDowell took inspiration for the design of Los Angeles by looking at architecture from the 1920s and 1940s.
Returning also from the previous movie were producers Jeff Most and Edward R. Pressman. Both Goyer and Pope wanted to make the film completely different from the first one, aiming to give it a more tragic feel, and for the characters to have more depth. While working on the film, Goyer was also writing the script for Dark City, which was directed by the previous film's director Alex Proyas. Punk rock legend Iggy Pop was hired to play the villain Curve; Pop had previously been offered the role of Funboy in the first movie. Tori Amos turned down the role of Sarah, while Jon Bon Jovi auditioned for the role of Ashe, but Vincent Pérez got that job in the end. Pérez was selected because of his performance in La Reine Margot. For inspiration, Pérez looked to Jim Morrison and Hamlet. A young Thomas Jane was picked to play the villain Nemo. While the filmmakers and studio originally intended to create a substantially different movie to the first one (out of respect for Brandon Lee), Miramax ordered the movie to be re-edited so as to resemble the earlier one as much as possible. Tim Pope refused and he, along with Goyer, eventually disowned the movie, as it did not represent their vision.
Read more about this topic: The Crow: City Of Angels
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.”
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)
“Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)
“To expect to increase prices and then to maintain them at a higher level by means of a plan which must of necessity increase production while decreasing consumption is to fly in the face of an economic law as well established as any law of nature.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)