‘The Crow’ First Trailer: Bill Skarsgård and FKA Twigs Resurrect a Love Story Decades in the Making

Kate Erbland
·2 min read
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“It’s not anger. It’s love.” Such is the ethos of “The Crow” — and the most memorable line in today’s first trailer for Rupert Sanders’ long-gestating remake of the 1994 cult drama of the same name.

This time around, it’s Bill Skarsgård bringing the iconic, love-driven baddie back to life (literally, of course). The breakout “It” star leads the new reimagining of the graphic novel that was infamously brought to the big screen in 1994. In that version, Bruce Lee’s son Brandon Lee played the lead role of Eric Draven, a man who comes back from the dead to take revenge on the man who murdered him and his fiancée. Lee was killed on set during the final days of production when a prop gun fired.

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“The Crow” has been set for various remakes over the past three decades, with Mark Wahlberg, Jason Momoa, Bradley Cooper, James McAvoy, Tom Hiddleston, and Skarsgård’s own brother Alexander Skarsgård all previously attached to different iterations. With Sanders at the helm, Skarsgård is set to play rockstar Draven, who is killed alongside his beloved Shelly (FKA Twigs) by her evil ex (Danny Huston), only to come back with a vengeance.

Per the film’s official synopsis, the film follows “soulmates Eric Draven (Skarsgård) and Shelly Webster (FKA Twigs) [who] are brutally murdered when the demons of her dark past catch up with them. Given the chance to save his true love by sacrificing himself, Eric sets out to seek merciless revenge on their killers, traversing the worlds of the living and the dead to put the wrong things right.”

Today’s trailer announcement also comes with a bevy of detailed personal notes from its stars, including Skarsgård, who shares that he was “a huge fan of the original film growing up as a kid and was so honored to take on the role of Eric Draven. But really what drew me to it was what Rupert Sanders wanted to do with it. He wanted to completely reimagine the story and the character and tailor it towards a modern audience. It’s a character that I know many revere and have a strong connection to — he is unlike any I’ve ever taken on before.”

Twigs added her own note, in which she shares that “the love Bill and I share on screen is effortless and indicative of the authenticity and ease that I dreamed of bringing to the role of Shelley. Eric and Shelley’s unbreakable unity is so profound and beautiful, something I hope we all feel at least once as part of the human experience.”

Lionsgate will release “The Crow” in theaters on Friday, June 7. You can watch the first trailer for Sanders’ film below.

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