Beyond ‘The Shadow’ of a doubt, what’s the most entertaining live-action standalone superhero movie you can think of? Chronicle? Darkman? Mystery Men? The Rocketeer? V for Vendetta? Okay, now which is the most notorious one-off superhero flick to get badly bludgeoned at the box office, all but dashing plans for a commercial multimedia franchise before they even started? Are the two answers the same?
After denying Sam Raimi the licensing rights to adapt his lifelong dream project, Universal Studios released The Shadow in 1994, based on a character created in 1931 as a Radio narrator by American publishers Street & Smith. The film was originally meant to be directed by visionary tech-wiz Robert Zemeckis but helmed by Australian music video director Russell Mulcahy instead, following several mediocre B-movies like Blue Ice and The Real McCoy.
The first of many foolhardy mistakes, Universal should have granted Raimi a chance to bring The Shadow to the big screen five years earlier. Raimi was forced to create Darkman in response, which combines elements of The Shadow with classic Universal monsters of the 1930s and ‘40s. While we can all thank Universal for indirectly gifting the world Darkman, it’s high time to look back and wonder What doomed The Shadow, including why the film failed to capture the hearts and minds of moviegoers, instantly ending plans to turn it into a mega-merchandising behemoth. All that and more when we pull back the mask and find out What Happened to this Movie!
The Shadow debuted in the 1930 radio program Detective Hour Story and first appeared in print in the 1931 pulp novel The Living Shadow. As a household mainstay, the character grew in popularity and was prominently featured in American comic strips, novels, serials, and other media formats, including The Shadow Magazine, published from 1931 to 1949. From 1937 to 1938, the great Orson Welles narrated The Shadow radio program, further catapulting the character into the collective consciousness and increasing the crime fighter’s cultural cache.
One key difference between print and radio versions of The Shadow is the name of his alter ego. In print, the unmasked Shadow goes by Kent Allard. In film and radio, he’s known as Lamont Cranston.
As for the 1994 big-screen adaptation, long-proven film producer Martin Bregman purchased the rights to The Shadow in 1982. While Universal denied Sam Raimi the chance to direct the adaptation, Robert Zemeckis was attached to the project throughout the 1980s while he was making such landmark studio hits as the Back to the Future trilogy. Despite denying Raimi the rights, Universal allowed him to write a treatment for Darkman in 1987, a composite superhero bearing The Shadow’s guilt-ridden origins, which he went and made for the studio and released in 1990.
Describing The Shadow, Bregman stated:
“Batman. Spider-Man. They all followed The Shadow. The Shadow really was the prototype. He was the first anti-hero in pop American literature. There’s a vestige of evil in him. There’s a vestige of danger in him. That’s what makes him a lot more interesting than all the other characters that follow.”
While developing the project, Bregman tapped David Koepp to pen the screenplay following his work on Jurassic Park. Koepp based the story on his childhood experience listening to The Shadow radio show on CBS reruns. With a handful of credits to his name by then, Koepp had just written Death Becomes Her for Zemeckis in 1992, with Universal planning on reteaming the duo for The Shadow. Alas, Zemeckis left the project around 1993, the same year Koepp’s outstanding screenplays for Jurassic Park and Carlito’s Way were released as feature film adaptations. Penelope Ann Miller, who plays Margo Lane in The Shadow, also stars in Carlito’s Way.
While Bregman produced Carlito’s Way – arguably Brian De Palma’s most underrated movie – he oversaw the silly throwaway thrillers Blue Ice and The Real McCoy in 1992-93. Once Zemeckis left, Bregman hired the director of those two movies, Russell Mulcahy to direct.
In 1990, Koepp wrote a new draft for Universal after struggling to adjust the proper tonal balance between light and dark, humor and horror. About Koepp’s early drafts, Bregman stated:
“Some of them were light, some of them were darker, and others were supposedly funnier – which they weren’t. It just didn’t work.”
Modulating the character’s tableau, Koepp combined elements of The Shadow’s radio persona and magazine appearance. For instance, the story beats are inspired by the novels, while the overarching tenor of the movie echoes the radio show. The Shadow’s alias, invisibility powers, and inclusion of Margo Lane were derived from the radio show. The Shadow’s iconic costume, dual semiautomatic handguns, and affiliated agents are inspired by the pulp publications.
While writing the script, Koepp had Alec Baldwin in mind for protagonist Lamont Cranston, stating:
“He has the eyes and the voice; he had so much of what I pictured Cranston being.”
To tailor the script to Baldwin’s natural charms and comedic timing, Koepp would sit in rehearsals and take notes to incorporate into the dialogue. Still, Koepp’s biggest challenge was to set The Shadow apart from other superheroes by getting to the heart of what makes the character tick. The central query “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?” became the dramatic fulcrum on which to tell The Shadow’s story. As Lamont looks inward to understand what drives men madly murderous, the story becomes about “guilt and atonement,” according to Koepp, a personal redemption tale for the masked and fedoraed vigilante skulking the noirish nighttime.
Of course, a superhero is only as good as their archenemy, and when it came time to give The Shadow a worthy adversary, Koepp settled on Shiwan Khan. According to Koepp, Khan was chosen because:
“He was bold and he knew what he was doing – he wanted to conquer the world. That was very simple, maybe a little ambitious, but he knew exactly what he wanted.”
Although Chow Yun-Fat was considered to play Shiwan Khan, Mulcahy cast John Lone for the role. Khan, who appeared in four Shadow stories published in the ‘30s and ‘40s, is described as the last descendant of the barbarous Mongolian marauder Genghis Khan, steeping the mythological lore in rooted history. However, in 2003, DNA tests proved that roughly 8% of Mongolia’s male population descended from Genghis Khan, meaning despite being fictional, Shiwan Khan was far from the last remaining relative.
Speaking of inauthenticity, The Shadow was filmed in Los Angeles despite taking place in New York City, where the character originates. Bolstered by a $25 million budget that swelled to $40 million, the artifice continued when filming nearly the entire film on five Universal Studios’ sound stages. According to Mulcahy:
“Here we are on the Universal backlot where we’ve recreated New York City in California in the 1930s. The nice thing about using the backstages for this film is that it creates a certain hyper-reality.”
Principal photography lasted 60 days between September 27, 1993, and January 28, 1994, with a minor film unit performing on location throughout Southern California. For example, the interiors of the Monolith Hotel were filmed inside the Pantages Theater on Hollywood Boulevard.
The Cobalt Club that Lamont frequents in the film was modeled after Harlem’s famous Cotton Club and erected on a soundstage, with the Art Deco production design created by Terminator 2’s Joseph Nemec and Batman’s Costume Designer Bob Ringwood.
One of the coolest aspects of The Shadow is how Mulcahy mixes practical and CGI FX to create a vivid and vibrant visual experience. Mulcahy hired Brian De Palma’s longtime cinematographer Stephen H. Burum, as Director of Photography. Despite the heavy usage of practical and digital technology, Mulcahy maintained:
“There are a lot of FX in this film, but it’s not a FX film. It’s a character/story-driven film. The FX are part of the story.”
One overlooked part of the story includes the sweeping cinematic score by the great Jerry Goldsmith. The music helps elevate the mood of each emotional expression, with bold operatic strokes punctuating the violent action scenes, lush romantic melodies for the tender love scenes, and menacing synthesizers for Khan’s main theme. Composer Diane Warren also wrote a big-band-style number called “Some Kind of Mystery,” performed by Sinoa Loren, who is made up to resemble famous actor and singer Lena Horne in the Cobalt Club.
Before addressing The Shadow’s ill-fated reception, perhaps one reason for the movie’s failure to resonate among the masses is the obscure inside references to the 30s and 40s. Most of the movie’s plot points derive from The Shadow radio and magazine stories published decades before. So, unless you grew up with the character and were familiar with The Shadow’s crimefighting asides, most of the references and Easter Eggs flew right over your head.
For instance, Lamont Cranston’s first encounter with Shiwan Khan features a sly in-joke about where Cranston purchased his Brooks Brothers tie, which lampoons the radio show’s habitual product placement. From there, the movie adapts several radio and novel storylines and action sequences that, unless they happened to be familiar beforehand, did not connect with the audience in 1994. The movie preached to the converted and microtargeted a pre-established fanbase without welcoming broader audiences.
A glaring example includes the scene in which Cranston rescues Dr. Roy Tam from suicidally leaping from the Brooklyn Bridge. The scene was lifted directly from The Shadow’s debut novel, The Living Shadow. While the scene works fine without this knowledge, having a reference point makes it much more satisfying.
Another example includes the Silver Coffin of Temujin, which was included in the 1933 Shadow tale “Masters of Death.” Yet another is the cigarette billboard presenting Khan’s demands, which was first seen in the 1939 Shadow story, “The Golden Master.”
Speaking of cigarette ads, the smoking man billboard for Llama Cigarettes in the film parodies the real-life Camel Cigarette billboard campaign created in 1941. In The Shadow, Camel’s tagline “I’d walk a mile for a Camel” is replaced with “I’d climb a mountain for a Llama.” More subtle yet, some have suggested that the neon green tinge illuminating the Llama Cigarettes ad in the film refers to The Green Lama, one of The Shadow’s rival radio and print media superheroes in the 1940s.
Time and again, The Shadow is loaded with subtle hints and easy-to-miss references to the character’s multimedia origins, much of which went unnoticed by younger crowds looking to enjoy a brainless summer superhero blockbuster.
As for production, the most troubled example includes the exhilarating Hall of Mirrors chase during the finale. The sequence was intended to be much longer but a massive 6.7 magnitude earthquake rocked Northridge, California, on the day of filming, January 17, 1994. The quake obliterated the elaborate set and delayed principal photography for one week. Once the cast and crew returned to finish the scene, there was not enough time and money to realize the sequence as initially planned. The Hall of Mirrors sequence was adapted from the 1942 Shadow story “The Doom Room.”
Yet another reference to The Shadow’s origins includes the scene where Lamont’s uncle and NYC Police Commissioner Wainright Barth, visits the museum. Barth is informed that the guard’s death is being investigated by Inspector Cardona, an overt link to Inspector Joe Cardona, a key character in the Shadow pulp novels that served as a blueprint for Batman’s Gotham City Police Commissioner, Jim Gordon. Not for nothing, Batman creator Bob Kane has called The Shadow a significant influence on The Dark Knight.
Less noticeable is the empty building office with the name B. Jonas printed on the door. B. Jonas was the name of The Shadow’s recurring contact, known for passing messages back and forth between The Shadow and his envoys.
The point is, by faithfully shoehorning small details from The Shadow’s 1930s origins, Koepp and Mulcahy may have gone too far with the minutiae, alienating new generations of fans and appealing only to a built-in fanbase from 50-60 years prior. Between that and the forgettably muddled story, The Shadow couldn’t atone for its grand visual splendor and ultimately became a commercial failure for Universal.
Released as a summer blockbuster on July 1, 1994, The Shadow proved to be anything but. The film grossed $48 million worldwide for a net gross of just $8 million, nowhere near enough to justify the cost of production, much less warrant a franchise-launching sequel. Just as Warner Bros. had done with Batman, Universal planned on turning The Shadow into a merchandise money-making machine, producing ancillary toys, clothing lines, video games, movie sequels, and TV spin-offs.
Alas, Disney’s The Lion King and New Line’s The Mask kept The Shadow shrouded from the masses, grossly outperforming the movie at the domestic and international box office. Plans for the multimedia franchise were all but dead on arrival when The Shadow took a critical drubbing for its blandly uninvolved story. In 2025, The Shadow holds a dismal 37% Rotten Tomatoes rating and a middling 50 Metascore. The film was ridiculed in Episode #141 of the How Did This Get Made podcast, in which the panelists revealed that the Phurba dagger prop seen in The Shadow is the same one used in The Golden Child, released by Paramount in 1986.
Of course, the grand irony for Universal is that Sam Raimi, who lobbied to direct The Shadow, made the superior Darkman for the studio four years earlier. Darkman made more money and received better reviews from critics and audiences alike. Had the studio granted Raimi the opportunity to make his dream movie in the first place, perhaps plans for a Shadow franchise would have materialized. However, Raimi attempted to make The Shadow again in 2006 with Batman producer Michael E. Uslan, presumably for Warner Bros., but the project fizzled.
As for The Shadow’s failures, competition also came from better comic book and vigilante superhero movies like Batman, Dick Tracy, Darkman, and Batman Returns, likely leading to audience fatigue. Regardless, The Shadow’s poor box office performance led to the cancelled release of a completed NES video game. A pinball game for The Shadow was designed by Brian Eddy and released by Midway in 1994. Author James Luceno published a novelization of The Shadow, which expanded on the story events depicted in the film.
As you can see, a lot went into promoting The Shadow as a multi-pronged franchise, but not enough into the actual moviemaking. For all his talents, Russell Mulcahy never eclipsed his two first films, Razorback and Highlander, and is now best known for directing the Teen Wolf MTV series.
And that brings us back to Sam Raimi. What the hell’s a guy got to do to prove to Universal he’s the right director to realize The Shadow? Three successful Spider-Man movies? Check. A worthy Doctor Strange sequel? Yep. A long-running track record of innovative horror stories? Indeed. A lifelong interest in illuminating The Shadow on the silver screen? You bet your balls!
While we can all dream about Raimi making a future Shadow movie, Mulcahy’s version remains a fairly entertaining diversion despite its poor reception. It may not be the best standalone superhero outing on record, but it’s certainly not the worst. The most important lesson to be gleaned is optioning the right material alone isn’t good enough for a studio and producer. Picking the proper talent to translate the material with a unique vision will always remain essential. Bregman bet on Mulcahy from their previous working relationship, while Universal never gave Raimi a chance before or after he made Darkman.
www.joblo.com (Article Sourced Website)
#Shadow #Happened #Underrated #Superhero #flick