Despite rumors that Blumhouse's long-gestating Spawn reboot has been shelved, creator Todd McFarlane has now confirmed that the project is still moving forward.
Good news for fans of the demonic anti-hero, although it sounds like we might be waiting quite a while to see the movie.
“We’re just still trying to get the script right,” McFarlane tells Dread Central. “I know it’s frustrating to everybody, especially me. I haven’t signed off because I just am not reading what I have in my head.”
“What’s happening is people are either going too far off the reservation, or they’re being too loyal to it,” he added. “To me, there’s nothing worse than somebody coming up to me going, ‘Hey, I’m going to do a Spawn movie, and I’m going to take your first five issues, and I’m going to redo the origin issue.’ First off, we’ve already had that movie. And second off…There’re 380 issues of Spawn. I’m telling you right now, very little of the conversation would be the first five issues. I’ve got 380 chapters. Spawn is not defined by the first four or five chapters.”
McFarlane went on to lay out his vision for the new movie.
“It should just be really dark and gritty and unsettling. When I see examples like Obsession or Backrooms, you go, ‘The audience will consume this.’ We don’t need to do superhero. As a matter of fact… we should be trying to do something different because, again, we’re not going to have a $200 million budget like other superhero movies.”
In 2024, McFarlane announced that the reboot will be titled King Spawn. We assume this means the story will be at least partially based on the King Spawn comic run, which you can check out a synopsis for below.
"King Spawn further expands the Spawn Universe with a growing presence of Hell, Heaven, and Heroes here on Earth. A classic villain from Spawn's past has begun asserting his powers on Earth by corrupting as many souls as possible. And only Spawn knows that he even exists."
Back in 2022, the movie - which has been in the works since 2017, if you can believe it - added a new writing team in the form of Scott Silver (Joker), Malcolm Spellman (The Falcon and The Winter Soldier; Captain America: New World Order), and up-and-coming scribe Matthew Mixon.
As far as we know, Jamie Foxx (Spider-Man: No Way Home; Django Unchained) is still attached to play the lead role of Al Simmons, aka Spawn, but things may well have changed in that regard.
McFarlane was considering stepping behind the camera at one point, but seems to have had a change of heart, acknowledging that "he may not be the right person to direct, particularly now that some of the highest-profile writers in the comic book movie space are involved."
“If we’ve got an A-list actor, A-list producers, A-list writers, then do you want to shoot for A-list directors, A-list cinematographers?” he said in a recent interview. “The answer is, ‘of course.’ Let’s keep the momentum going.”
“I grew up in Berkeley, which is a comic book city. Todd McFarlane’s SPAWN character was always one of my favorites — a Black superhero that was no bullshit, he was cool and dealt with modern issues,” added Spellman. “Myself, Matt Mixon, and Scott Silver are pledged to honoring what Todd started and what SPAWN is at its core, delivering something that’s relevant and edgy and unlike any other superhero movie out there.”
Though the character's popularity has dwindled somewhat over the years, Image's Spawn was one of the best-selling comic books of the '90s. The 1997 movie failed to do Spawn and his various enemies and allies justice, but the HBO animated series was a lot more successful and is well worth tracking down if you haven't seen it yet.
King Spawn is being developed with an R-rating in mind.