Will We Get Another Spawn Movie?
Another live-action Spawn movie is on the way according to Todd McFarlane, but it's been in development for close to a decade.
As recently as March, Spawn creator Todd McFarlane confirmed that a new live-action film based on his signature antihero is still in the works, with Jamie Foxx attached to play the titular comic book character. It’s now been eight years since McFarlane first publicly announced the feature project on a Reddit AMA, and some fans are understandably concerned it will ultimately be damned to development hell. But according to McFarlane, the movie’s coming, but it won’t be a lot like what he first envisioned for the reboot.
Talking to ComicBook.com back in 2017, McFarlane insisted that he would be both writing and directing the Spawn reboot, in spite of not having any directing experience. He also consistently compared his vision for the reboot to Steven Spielberg’s career-making classic Jaws. The film would be more of a low-budget horror flick and told from the point of view of the police detective “Twitch” Williams.
From the sound of it, in McFarlane’s earliest version, Spawn himself — like the shark in Jaws — might not actually have shown up that much:
“Everything else is normal in this story other than (gesture) the shadow moves, and at times even when it moves, the cop just sort of thinks he’s losing his mind so he doesn’t even trust that the shadow’s moving. If you’re a bad guy, then this thing is going to come and it’s going to get you.”
-Todd McFarlene
In the source material, Spawn begins his life as Al Simmons, an assassin who is murdered by his partner, sent to Hell, and then sent back to Earth as a Hellspawn. But according to what McFarlane said in 2017, we might not have even learned that much about the character in the film he had planned. According to CinemaBlend, he used John Carpenter’s The Thing as an example for why Spawn didn’t need an origin story:
“Or John Carpenter’s The Thing: where do the aliens come from? I don’t know! What was its reason for taking over bodies? I don’t know! It just was. I’m OK without an origin. Just give me a compelling story, scare the shit out of me from time to time, and I’m along for the ride.”
-Todd McFarlane
Since McFarlane’s earliest public statements about the Spawn reboot, however, things have clearly changed. In a more recent conversation with ComicBook.com, the fan-favorite Spider-Man artist said that his vision of a more low-budget horror version of the Spawn reboot probably won’t be what fans get. With a big name like Jamie Foxx attached to play the lead, and other “multiple A-list people,” McFarlane speculates whatever studio backs the project isn’t “looking for a big extravaganza. But, they’re also not looking for an eight-million-dollar horror movie budget.“
McFarlane also admitted that in most likelihood — while he still seemed a little hopeful he could do it — he probably won’t wind up directing the Spawn reboot. Admirably, McFarlane seems humble enough and realistic enough to accept it:
“They’re not going to want a first time director… If I’m the CEO, if I’m practical about it, I wouldn’t take that deal either… They’re going to have a lot at risk, because of the deal we cut with them. They’re going to want to get it back, they’re going to want to get a professional director… I knew that was part of the reality.”
-Todd McFarlane
Any film executives who remember the critical and commercial catastrophe that was 2008’s The Spirit, which was helmed by Frank Miller — another guy who, like McFarlene, was a veteran comic book artist with little directing experience — would have around 21 million reasons to not like the idea of letting McFarlene direct Spawn (21 million being the difference between The Spirit‘s $60 million production cost and its $39 million worldwide box office gross).
The first live-action Spawn film hit screens in 1997 with Michael Jai White in the lead role. John Leguizamo played the demonic Clown, aka Violator, and Martin Sheen was the crooked Jason Wynn.
It didn’t break any box office records and the critics couldn’t stand it, but if nothing else it proved to be a major landmark in terms of representation. With the release of Spawn, Michal Jai White became the first Black actor to play a major superhero from the comics on the big screen.
Spawn just barely claimed the landmark, however. Steel, starring Shaquille O’Neal as the eponymous Superman spinoff, was released only two weeks later.
Todd McFarlane was one of a group of comic book professionals who defected from Marvel and DC in 1992 to found Image Comics, with which they published their creator-owned comic books. Spawn quickly became one of the company’s consistently top-selling titles and it enjoyed numerous spinoffs. The comics were also adapted into the animated series Todd McFarlane’s Spawn on HBO in the late nineties.
