Todd McFarlane's SPAWN Film Will Be "The Blumhouse Version of a Superhero Movie"

Producer Jason Blum is very confident that Todd McFarlane’s long-awaited Spawn movie will get made, and he has said that it will be released in 2025. This is a project that McFarlane has been trying to get made forever, and if this actually happens, it will be the “Blumhouse version of a superhero movie.”

During New York Comic Con, Blum was asked about the movie and he explained:

“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.”

Yeah, I never really thought of that. It will be interesting to see How Blumhouse handles a superhero movie. It seems like Spawn is the perfect character for them to start out with. It’ll be interesting to see if this film ends up being a big hit and actually launches a successful Spawn film franchise.

There have been several drafts of a script written over the years, the most recent version was developed by Scott Silver, Malcolm Spellman, and Matthew Mixon. During a previous interview, McFarlane said the script was only 30 pages away from being finished before the writers’ strike hit. "We were in the middle of writing the script and then the writers strike came. So that basically came to a screeching halt, if you will. But they were pretty far along in it, so I'm assuming that they've given it a lot of thought during the strike. They know what they're going to write, the last 30 pages, which is all they need to finish. And so as soon as the strike's over, I'm assuming they're going to quickly finish that up. We will do some rewrites. We'll go into Hollywood. We'll find a buyer, maybe we'll find a couple of buyers, get into a bidding war. And then we'll come back out and make the announcement that says, 'We've got the funding, the studio, and the production date all lined up. It's go time.'"

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."

I really hope they can pull this off.

Via: Bleeding Cool News