We already know McFarlane wants the next Spawn movie to shy away from the big, flashy, supernatural side of the comics and focus more on a noirish type detective story with "Spawn lurking in the shadows". The concept was greeted with surprise and befuddlement by many fans of the great comic. But it turns out, there is some method in the mans madness...
"The reason I want to go small with it is that it's a completely R-rated movie," said McFarlane. "If I sell it up big, studios want that PG-13."
"They're a little bit gun-shy with Watchmen not doing the numbers they'd like," he explained. "But I've met people who make $5 million dollar movies for a living, and they walk around with the biggest grins on their faces."
"If i take the offer of the big studios with the big budgets and big production values, that's all nice and you have a better chance of getting a big star, and it works for them commercially, but as I get older, it's sort of less interesting to me," he said.
McFarlane said that there are various studios interested in making his movie but for now he is just focused on finishing the screenplay..
"I have a hundred pages of notes, and what I've done is catalog all the notes, put them in order and now begin putting a little bit of dialog to them," said McFarlane. "The main concern right now is getting the scenes and the beats down. Once you get that, then putting words in their mouths is pretty easy."
I completely understand him wanting to make a more adult movie, much like the HBO animated series was. But I hope he rethinks the idea of making
Spawn a supporting character in his own movie!