Todd McFarlane Says His SPAWN Movie Will Be Something "Different" and Tell a Story "That's Dangerous"

Todd McFarlane continues to talk about the Spawn movie that he’s been trying to get made for what seems like forever. During a recent interview, he talks about working with Joker screenwriter Scott Silver and how they are trying to do something different and stay away from everything that Marvel has been doing. McFarlane told ScreenRant:

“The one thing that I’m excited about in my conversations, and mostly with Scott Silver, is that he is just hell-bent – and don’t say that as a pun, literally – of wanting to do something different. Every conversation, he just is like, ‘We just can’t do Marvel lite.’ He doesn’t want to do horror because that is its own thing. He’s just fighting to try and see if we can do something slightly different. … I’ve always said when you try to do something different, you let the audience decide whether that’s better or worse, right? They’re the paying customer.

McFarlane went on to say that Silver is looking to tell a dangerous story. He went on to say:

“But he said something to me the other day that I thought was almost perfect. He said, ‘I want to do a story that’s dangerous.’ And he didn’t mean it in that there’s danger in the story, per se. He meant that it would be a little bit of a risk to do this movie because it’s not going to fall into an easy formula, and I’m all for that. I’m all for trying something different – in his word, dangerous. That’s music to my ears.”

I would love nothing more than to see something different from a comic book superhero movie. While were in the middle of superhero fatigue, people are obviously board of seeing the same story told over and over again. So, yeah! I’m up for something different, dangerous, and not like Marvel! I hope that they can actually pull this off and make a great Spawn movie.

Producer Jason Blum previously talked about the film, saying: “Yes, I’m going to bring the Blumhouse edge [to the Spawn movie]. It’s going to be edgy and original as compared to other superhero movies. It’s gonna definitely feel like the Blumhouse version of a superhero movie.”

Jamie Foxx is still attached to the film and will take on the role of Spawn after, and when recently talking about Foxx’s involvement, McFarlane said: “Until Jamie says he can’t, he’s still my guy. I’m very loyal to people, and Jamie was my guy and has been my guy. He’s had a bit of a setback and he says he’s going to get back to the top of the mountain. I have no doubt. I know Jamie — he is a very strong-willed, determined human being. So he tells me, ‘Don’t worry about me, Todd. I’ll be there when the bell rings. I’ll be there.’ So I have complete and utter confidence.”

McFarlane also talked about it’s now or never to get his movie made, and explained: "Something's going to give in the next few months, right? There's too many people pushing in that direction, again I've got a call later today on that very subject. You can imagine Spider-Man makes a billion dollars and everybody sort of gets sort of... I mean they were already crazy, now they just got twice as crazy. I mean they got crazy when the only movies that were making money were superheroes, and then Venom goes and rocks it, and then Spider-Man comes in and obliterates it, so now they're almost singular in their mindset of what kind of ideas they've got. So something has to happen. We'll never get to the top of the mountain if we can't do it now, with everybody wanting to do it now. Fingers crossed. I would say it's now or never."

The movie has previously been described as “Spawn meets David Fincher” and a “gritty” and “dirty thing.” When previously talking about his take on the story, McFarlane 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."

McFarlane previously confirmed that the movie will be rated R and that the script he's written is "scary and "badass." He’s described Spawn as the Jaws of the movie, saying: "The world's going to be real, except for one thing that's going to move. You're never going to see a dude in a rubber suit....This is going to be my Jaws shark." 

He explained his vision for the character, describing him as the boogeyman, and also shared some of the things that we will not see in the movie: "In the background, there’s this thing moving around, this boogeyman. That boogeyman just happens to be something that you and I, intellectually, know is Spawn. Will he look like he did in the first movie? No. Will he have a supervillain he fights? No. He’s going to be the specter, the ghost."

Producer Jason Blum also previously said of the project: “What excited me about it is that Spawn is kind of the last great unexploited comic. So that seemed like an amazing opportunity. It’s taken longer than I hoped it would have to get the story right, but we’re still working on it." Blum also said that the reboot is “gonna be very different, it’s gonna be very edgy."