Released in theaters by Miramax Films on May 13, 1994, today marks the 25th anniversary of The Crow, the film based on James O’Barr‘s 1989 comic book, directed by Alex Proyas, and starring Brandon Lee in the lead role.

Today would have been the 49th birthday of Brandon Lee, martial artist and actor best remembered for being the lead role in The Crow, a film which was marked with tragedy when Lee died of an accidental gunshot wound during filming. Lee was also the son of the legendary monarch of the martial arts, Bruce Lee.

Born on February 1, 1965 in Oakland, CA, Brandon Bruce Lee’s life has been wrapped in a sort of shrouded mysterious enigma ever since his fateful death back on March 31, 1993. Like his father, Brandon Lee died young, under unorthodox circumstances and was also on the precipice of super stardom as an actor and practitioner of the martial arts. That unfortunately never got attained for him and in the wake of his death, Brandon Lee didn’t become the kind of iconic almost mythical figure that his father became in the wake of his passing in 1973, but instead, the younger Lee became a sort of footnote to the whole Hollywood pool of unfortunate, work-related deaths. But make no mistake, Lee was on a path to put himself as a successor to some of the empire his father had built; films like Showdown in Little Tokyo and Rapid Fire were starting to put Lee in the driver’s seat as an action star of these kind of purposely bombastically cinema potboilers, where dialogue and narrative took a back seat to the stunning visuals of the martial arts on screen, and he seemed poised to become the next action star, like a Van Damme or Steven Seagal.

The movie’s star may not have lived to see what has been hailed as his greatest film on the widest of screens, but that didn’t stop The Crow, the controversial 1994 feature adaptation of the underground comic book miniseries by James O’Barr, from becoming a box office hit and spawning a franchise that includes three sequels, a short-lived television series, and a forthcoming remake. Now the original film that helped establish Miramax Films’ genre movie arm Dimension Films as a major force in the industry that would give rise to the Scream and Scary Movie series several years later is coming to Blu-ray. You can check out the trailer and a list of special features below this article.