Todd McFarlane Says His New SPAWN Film Will Be a "Dark, Ugly Two Hours Worth of Movie"
If you’re thinking that Todd McFarlane’s upcoming Spawn movie will be a fun, light film, think again. McFarlane, who is directing the film, says that the film will have no joy. Instead it will be a “dark” and “ugly” film. While talking to Nerdist recently, the director promised that there would be “no joy” and explains:
“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.”
For those of you who are familiar with Spawn, then you know that he’s a super dark character. It’s not surprising that he is going to deliver a joyless Spawn movie, because that’s the character and the world that he lives in!
McFarlane is going for straight up horror, which is what I was hoping for. A lot of fans have gotten used to the light-hearted, humorous comic book movies, but this movie is not going to be that, and I imagine some audiences won’t like it.
The movie stars Jamie Foxx in the role of Spawn. Jeremy Renner is taking on the role of Detective 'Twitch' Williams. McFarlane 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:
"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."
The movie is set to be released in June of 2019, and I’m looking forward to seeing what comes of it. What do you think about McFarlane’s plan on making a jet black Spawn movie?