Just last week, the new cinematic take on James O’Barr’s cult comic **The Crow **spread its wings and started to fly once more with word that 28 Weeks Later** director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo would be taking the helm. Now it looks like Bradley Cooper will be the man donning the pasty face-make-up and scowling a lot as the resurrected, vengeful hero.
According to the Heat Vision blog, Cooper is in early talks to play Eric Draven, a rock musician trying to celebrate with his fiancée when thugs burst in and attack them. His fiancée is raped and murdered and Draven himself is beaten nearly to death before the job is finished when he’s thrown out of a high window.
But that’s not the end of his story: he’s brought back to life by supernatural forces and guided by a crow to wreak bloody vengeance on his killers, sorting out an entire criminal gang in the process so he can the chance to reunite with his angelic other half.
Cooper and Fresnadillo have apparently already been meeting about the idea and “shared a vision for the character and the film.” By that, we expect the usual Hollywood talk of being on the same page for the role, and not getting baked off their heads in a tent until they both hallucinated a unicorn which told them it would be a good idea.
Relativity Media is behind the new film, and given that Cooper just gave them a solid hit with Limitless, you can understand why they’d want him. It’s definitely different from most of the actor’s previous work – while Limitless had a darker edge, this could see him do something fresh. The question is, can audiences accept him as Draven? We may find out…