Would it kill them to just adapt the book?
^
Doing that would allow James O'Barr into the national daily media cycle as part of the marketing roll out. All modern marketing is built around "synergy" across different coordinated platforms.
The corporate legacy media establishment would simply not tolerate O'Barr. ( From the standpoint of institutional level investors in the current film industry, certain demographic ranges won't be shown with empathy, if anyone tries, it just won't be financed. If it gets a smaller level release, it will face open suppression from the coordinated algorithms of the various major platforms) Which is unfortunate.
I've read the graphic novel a couple of times. I've gifted it to someone who suffered a loss many years ago too. The practical audience capture from a straight graphic novel lift would be, oddly enough, a tween audience. That could work a couple of decades ago, but not now. Love = Pain is a very young adult trope. I'm not discounting O'Barr's pain and real life experiences, I'm only giving you a softer industry evaluation on this from a development standpoint.
I enjoyed the graphic novel, very much so. But it's dated. Even something like Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns has themes and tone that was simply more relevant in the era in which it was released. The current young counter culture is more straight edged. The mainstream tween culture is more deviant today than decades ago. IMHO, the litmus here is satire. You can be provocative with satire when deviation is the social norm. ( Hence why I believe that IMHO that the Wednesday/Jenna Ortega series mostly worked with mainstream success and something like Tina Fey's Mean Girls is timeless) The Crow graphic novel has zero satire in it.
My take is the most marketable thing here would be the James O'Barr story itself. How the Crow came to be. But again, that would require a translated characterization to be shown with real empathy and nuance and that's just not going to happen in the current industry. The source material is tough subject matter to work with, and the timing within the current culture doesn't help much. Just some thoughts.