Corin Hardy plans to go back to the source material for his adaptation of James O'Barr's The Crow. The director of The Hallow, which debuts this week at Sundance, spoke with Fangoria about his plans for the long-gestating film.

“It’s still early days on that, but what I can say for now is that I’m a huge, huge fan of both the first film and James O’Barr’s graphic novel," Hardy said. "I was obsessed with The Crow when I was growing up. When I heard about the remake, what I thought could be very interesting today, 20 years later, especially with this whole Marvel Universe that’s happened, is that the Crow always stood as an outsider to me. I kind of felt he would be the right character for me if I got the chance to do it. And now that I have gotten the chance to do it, I’m very much going back to the graphic novel, particularly looking into the illustrations themselves as much as the story, and picking out all those beautiful ideas and details that haven’t really been used yet."

Hardy also intends to create a tone with the film that reflects the original movie and comic as well as the current comic-based movie marketplace.

“I also want to open the story up in such a way that the Crow is now part of a world where there are the Marvel movies and the Dark Knight movies,” the director said. “I intend it to be incredibly emotional and brutal, and all the things you’d want from a Crow film. I want to make a movie that I would have wanted to see, as a huge fan of The Crow."

These comments echo those made last fall by O'Barr: “We’re not remaking the movie, we’re re-adapting the book. My metaphor is that there is a Bela Lugosi Dracula and there’s a Francis Ford Coppola Dracula, they use the same material, but you still got two entirely different films. This one’s going to be closer to Taxi Driver or a John Woo film, and I think there’s room for both of them – part of the appeal of the Crow comics after all is that they can tell very different stories after all.”

Luke Evans is the most recent actor attached to star in the project, which, as Hardy said, is still in the early stages.