Todd McFarlane Teases Big SPAWN Movie News, Confirms Director Announcement Timeline

It’s been a long road for the Spawn movie, but creator Todd McFarlane just dropped a promising update during an interview with ComicBook at San Diego Comic-Con. The project, which fans have been waiting on for years, appears to be moving toward a major milestone, and it involves an A-list director.

McFarlane opened up about the frustrations of getting the film off the ground and why this time feels different:

“I’ve been talking about it for seven years and it just seems like there’s always an impediment that’s frustrating and I, to some extent, I know I’ve frustrated my wife. She’s like, ‘Stop talking about it, just make it,’ and I think it’s fair.

“I think the fans are the same way. What I will say is that we are still moving along. I went and met with a director, we want to sign them, they gave me the numbers last week, we’ve given it to them, hopefully, he signs on.”

So, there’s already a contract out for a director McFarlane calls an A-list talent. But fans shouldn’t expect an immediate announcement. The creator explained he wants to do things differently this time:

“I don’t think we’ll announce when he signs on. I think what we’ll do is we’ll announce when we have the script and we’ve got the buyer. Instead of doing what I’ve done before, every time we hire somebody, I announce it, is to just go, ‘It sold with this director, writer, these people attached as actors, boom, boom, boom, this is what we’re gonna make,’ that would be it.

“But the contract went out, literally, last week. I’m here to tell you it’s an A[-list] director, from my perspective. I go, ‘Wow,’ we keep getting lucky with Spawn. The people who are excited about it are people that are in the top tier, from my perspective, so it’s like, ‘Wow. Okay, cool.’ So we’ll see.”

McFarlane also reassured fans that Blumhouse Productions remains fully committed to bringing Spawn to life:

“Again, fingers crossed he wants to do something creepy, too. We’re just jibing. I’m supposed to be getting a pit stop from him here in the next month and when we do that, then the script goes and hopefully we sign whatever. We’ll see.

“But we’re constantly trying to move that thing forward. We haven’t stopped. It’s constantly going. And, if you talk to Jason [Blum], him and his crew are pushing it too, right? They want this thing to happen as much as I do.”

As for the title? Last year’s big reveal of King Spawn as a working title got some conversation going, but McFarlane says it’s not final and not based on the comic series of the same name:

“It’s probably just a working title. I think it’s cool. It’s strong. The thing is, is that it was a way for us to say that we’re not just gonna emulate the past and he felt by just calling it Spawn plain old Spawn that it would sort of go, oh, this is just a reboot and, and repeat.

“So I don’t know if that would be the final title or whatever. You have to clear things and let go and all those other things. But it was just a way to separate it, to just at least for us internally just to say, hey, this is our version that is different from the one decades ago.”

But, the Spawn movie is alive and creeping closer to reality, with an A-list director on the horizon and Blumhouse pushing full steam ahead. If things go according to plan, McFarlane might finally get to bring his hellish antihero back to the big screen in a way fans have been waiting for.

Jamie Foxx is still attached to star in the movie, and the script was written by Matt Mixon, Malcolm Spellman (Falcon and the Winter Soldier), and Scott Silver (Joker).

McFarlane previously teased: “Deadpool is a fun R. Something like Joker 2 is a serious R. Our movie is going to be super serious and dark and gritty. It’s going to be an at times a heavy movie.

“If you like serious drama, with meaningful themes that are relevant and that may even some reflection of the world we live in, then this has a lot of those elements in it.”

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 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."

I hope this turns out to be a great movie!