MTV recently spoke with Todd McFarlane and he gave insight on the future of "Spawn" in animated form. It seems the series will begin production in 2010.
"I had a lot of people saying they loved the animated series more than the movie, because the movie was PG-13 and HBO wasn't shy about going into the R range with the series," said McFarlane of contrast between the 1997 "Spawn" movie starring Michael Jae White and the 1997-1999 animated series which cast Keith David as the voice of Spawn.
Spawn's animated series came to a halt due to legal matters and with the situation coming to an end legally, Todd wishes to bring back to life our beloved Hellspawn.
"We developed another 85-minute, movie-length storyline, but things got complicated near the end and there were some legal issues, so it got frozen because of that. Recently, we were able to come to a compromise where everybody is happy. As a result of that, at the end of this year—as long as both parties do what they're supposed to—then all the rights come back to me. Not only do I get the rights, but I get all the work that was done," he added. "And the work is fairly extensive, " explained McFarlane.
This 85-minute storyline he speaks of is pretty far along by the way because he has the back-story, character designs as well as voice recording completed.
McFarlane wants the animated series to have a connection with the live action "Spawn" movie he has in mind to be released much later on.
"The animated series has a lot of the same dark sensibilities as the movie I've talked about. This animated story is fairly compatible with the ideas I talked about with the movie. They would go hand-in-hand fairly well," said McFarlane.
When asked when we would hear more about the expected animated series, McFarlane wasn't shy on releasing an answer.
"Arguably, January 2 I can go into Hollywood and start knocking on doors," said McFarlane
I'm looking forward to the animated series