Todd McFarlane Says the Progress Being Made on His SPAWN Movie Is "Hot and Heavy"

Todd McFarlane has been trying to get his Spawn movie made for years! When Blumhouse came on board the project I thought for sure it was going to move forward. That was back in 2017, and five years later the project seems to still be stalled with no real traction.

The last bit of news that was shared was that Brian Tucker, who previously worked on the 2013 film Broken City, which starred Russell Crowe and Mark Wahlberg, was working on the script. Thanks to CB, we have another update from on the film from McFarlane himself, and he says progress on the film is getting "hot and heavy."

I couldn’t help but laugh at that response because it reminded me of the Seinfeld episode. Anyway, he explains that the slew of darker superhero films that have been being made are only helping the Spawn movie saying:

"I think that anytime any of those have success, I think it began a little bit with what Venom did because, he's sort of an anti-hero and then really got turbocharged with Joker. Now, like you're saying, the iteration of Batman and Moon Knight we're seeing. That there is a hunger there. That everything doesn't have to quite go down to the seven year old level"

I’d like to know the real reason why the Spawn movie is stalled because I’m back to being convinced that it’s not going to happen. It’s just a lot of talk. McFarlane previously talked about his confidence in the project, though, saying:

"I get it, because we're living in a weird time, in the pandemic, and nobody wants to say anything, because you don't know what's going to happen and whatever else. But we as a collective team are doing what needs to be done to keep this moving. We put a little bit of pressure on ourselves to say, 'Can we have by midyear something really big and tangible to go public with?' Which is not only to backtrack on the people we've added, but to also say, 'And we sold it to a studio.' Something that's really tangible. That it's like we're not just farting around.

"I know when people don't get concrete names and information and stuff, and when I have to say, 'Stuff's happening. Just wait,' that's not very satisfying answer, which is essentially what I'm saying. And that's what's frustrating, because I know that it's way more than that happening. And you know, dealing on the Hollywood front, with all the stuff, there are lots and lots of things going on that have yet to be sort of announced. But yeah, I fall in that same bucket, but at least we're all rowing in the same direction right now. So I think there's a bit of a distraction, but now, I think we're all pretty focused here, and everybody wants the same goal, which is, 'Let's take this thing to the next level. Come on, guys, let's go.'"

Jamie Foxx was previously cast as Spawn and Jeremy Renner as Twitch, but since so much time has passed since their casting, it’s unclear if they are still involved.

The film 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 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."

Producer Jason Blum also previously offered an update on the project several months ago saying that they're still actively pursuing the project, and they are taking their time to get the script right:

"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 then promised that the reboot is “gonna be very different, it’s gonna be very edgy." We’ll just have to keep waiting to see if this film will actually finally get made.