Between The Crow and Dark City, movie maker Alex Proyas had a lost project, revealed here.
by Patch O'Furr
Do those titles perk your ears up? They had major impact on cult movies from the 1990’s to now. The Crow won a new level of respect for comic-based movies, which had never been so dark before. (The soundtrack alone was a gateway for countless black-clad kids.) Then, Dark City created a visionary sci-fi dystopia world with only a handful to compare: like Brazil, The City of Lost Children, or Blade Runner. It was stellar work from director Alex Proyas. 1994-1998 may have been his peak (so far.)
There was supposed to be a movie in between: an adaptation of Freak’s Amour, an obscure but highly praised cult novel by Tom De Haven. It was optioned and scripted for Proyas. The project fell by the wayside for two sad reasons. One was aftershocks from the tragic death of Brandon Lee on set of The Crow. The other was critical success but financial failure for Dark City. Even though it’s called the best movie by Proyas, it hurt his career. It was triumph and tragedy. A year later, The Matrix came along (sharing studio and style) and won all the attention. Dark City has continued to influence movies like Inception.
Proyas followed up with 3 features that got mixed reviews. There’s mentions of a number of projects in development. The next one for sure is Gods of Egypt in 2016. (Hey furries, I wonder if there will be characters like Anubis?)
As far as I can tell, almost nobody in the fan world has talked about this lost movie project. (As a fan of the novel, I’d never known about it until now!) Stories like this are why I blog.
It’s an indirect topic for a Furry blog. The anthropomorphism is Monster Movie style – not funny animals. This is for sci-fi fans in general, especially ones for the niche called Body Horror. But it’s inspired by comics, and it’s relevant.
“…The story of Freak’s Amour is, in it’s own way, a story of body dysphoria.” – Dana Marie Andra, artist for the comic.
