The Shadow: Sony and Raimi’s Divorce Harms the Children

When relationships turns sour in Hollywood, they really turn sour.

Sony and Sam Raimi parted ways over Spider-Man (see our breakdown: How to kill a superhero franchise in 20 easy steps) and the studio announced it was just going to go ahead and reboot the whole damn thing.

Well, now, Raimi’s passion project The Shadow looks to be the next Sony casualty. (More at Techland: The 10 best iPhone camera apps)

Variety’s report says that Sony optioned the film rights to the Sam Raimi-produced Shadow reinvention back in 2006, but they have since lapsed and now Raimi’s agents are shopping the project around town. Rumblings suggest perhaps 20th Century Fox as a buyer.

Now is The Shadow the best superhero for the silver screen? Not quite. But it’s sure as hell not the worst, and I’m thinking it’s still a good bet that a properly rebooted and refurbished Shadow could make a compelling yarn. Heck, a compelling franchise.

As many of you surely already know, The Shadow was a radio creation, about a man with psychic powers, which went on to inspire comics, graphic novels, video games and a handful of films. The most recent was 1994’s Alec Baldwin vehicle – which wasn’t quite a four-star affair.

But I for one would love to see Raimi’s spin to the character, and I’m hoping it finds another home quickly.

Just because Sam and Sony don’t love each other any more, that doesn’t mean it’s your fault, Shadow. They still both love you. The good news is that it sounds like you won’t have to deal with joint custody.

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Related Topics: alec baldwin, hollywood divorces, movies, sam raimi, shadow, Gaming & Culture, Sony

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If you want to get a taste of Raimi’s spin on the character, watch Darkman as it contained many elements from the Shadow stories. I may be wrong, but I think I read somewhere (Bruce Campbell’s book maybe) that Darkman came into creation after Raimi’s first aborted attempt at doing The Shadow.
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Baldwin’s The Shadow not 4 stars? Well then it must have been 3.9998!

Was it as good as it could have been, no, did they do too much origin and not enough suspenseful crime fighting, Yes. Would it have been smarter to lighten the budget and go with GOOD advertising and promotion, absolutely.

I argue that if you consider the strikes against it and the fact that it was supposed to be part of a story arch, which according to interviews I saw, was originally going to be adventure and a side story that at the end of the third movie was supposed to be the coming together of his origin, but was changed to the standard origin, adventure, penultimate climax, they did they best they were allowed to do.