Todd McFarlane Blames Himself For His New SPAWN Movie Screenplay For Not Selling

Todd McFarlane has been trying to get his new Spawn movie made for years. Even though the movie is set up at Blumhouse and Jamie Foxx and Jeremy Renner are attached to star, the movie is still having a rough time moving forward.

McFarlane wrote the script and will direct the film, but as of right now, he is struggling with selling his script to a major studio and he blames himself for that because who else is he going to blame!? He’s the one who wrote the script! During a recent interview with Forbes, he said:

"I wrote the first draft of the screenplay. If I'd done my job and written a screenplay that mattered, that would have sold it. I'm culpable on that end to start with."

McFarlane understands that financiers might have their doubts working with an inexperienced filmmaker, which is why he’s surrounding himself with other talented people. He went on to say:

"That's why I went to get Jason Blum to produce, and attached Jamie [Foxx ]and Jeremy [Renner] - to add the quality to it. My goal is to continue to add those kind of quality people at all levels. The more I can add those people, the less I become relevant as a risk."

He’s also looking at hiring an unnamed award-winning screenwriter to help him polish the script. Regardless of the hiccups, McFarlane has said he’s confident the movie will happen this year.

When previously talking about the tone of the movie, the director promised that there would be “no joy,” and explained:

“There’s gonna be no fun lines in it, and it’s just gonna be this dark, ugly two hours worth of movie, which is essentially what a lot of supernatural/horror movies are anyway. There’s not a lot of funny in them. And that seems to be a weird hurdle for a lot of people in this city to get over because they sort of go into a superhero/Avengers default all the time.”

McFarlane went on to say that this Spawn film is going to be a serious R-rated, scary, creepy movie:

“My bent for what I want to do with Spawn is a lot more serious, and a lot more dark, than what people are seeing traditionally in PG-13 superhero movies. It’s just going to be a dead-serious, R-rated, scary, creepy movie. Done, period, and I’m not wavering from that. And if at some point they just go, ‘No, the only way this gets made is if we convert that,’ then we’re never gonna make it. I’ll go and beg, borrow, and steal the money, I’ll get it made. Don’t worry, I’ll get it made.”

I’ve been really curious to see his vision for it brought to life. When talking about his take on the story, he previously explained:

"There's two big roles in the script. There's obviously sort of Spawn himself, although in a weird way it's not the biggest role, and then there's the cop. The cop is this character Twitch who's been there since issue #1. Twitch is the role in this one, and I sort of refer to him as my sheriff Brody, who is the sheriff in the Jaws movie. Although it was called Jaws, Jaws didn't really talk a lot in his movie, right? He just kind of showed up at the opportune time to make the movie worthwhile."

He went on to elaborate on how his Spawn movie compares to Jaws, saying:

"It was sheriff Brody, the humans talking, chasing the fantastical thing that sort of made the movie, and to me, there's that element. 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."

He also said that Spawn himself won't talk in the movie. He'll just be this thing lurking in the shadows. When talking about the dynamic between the two main characters in the film, he said:

"Spawn is King Arthur and Twitch is Sir Lancelot, and this isn’t about physicality, or jumping over buildings. This is more a brawn and brain combination, and the first film I think of with him is The Hurt Locker, the army grunt doing the job, and that spilled out into all these roles leading up to Wind River. There was a sense of melancholy to that character that is important and that was a movie also made by a first time director, but one who wrote the thing and so wasn’t nervous about trying to get what you want. Jeremy had the experience of working with the first timer and saw that if you put a good crew together, the whole is way better than the parts and you don’t have to worry."

I hope that McFarlane finally gets to make this Spawn movie. I want to see his vision for it brought to life! I just have no idea if it will actually ever happen.