Todd McFarlane has been trying to get his new Spawn movie made for over a decade and I’m just not sure if it’s ever going to happen. The project is set up at Blumhouse Productions, but it doesn’t seem like there has been much progress there.
McFarlane previously announced he would be making his directorial debut with the movie and that Jamie Foxx was set to star as Spawn alongside Jeremy Renner as detective Twitch Williams. I don’t even know if those two are even still involved with the project! It’s been so long since they were cast.
The creator of Spawn recently sat down with CB for an interview where they talked about the possibility of developing a Spawn streaming series if the film doesn’t happen, and this is what he said:
“The answer is you should probably think about it. What if one of the big networks come out and draw up a ton of cash and say they want to make it a streaming movie? My only hesitation for that kind of deal right now is that there’s no data that I can think of that somebody’s been able to build a [movie] franchise starting as a streaming [series].
“[Franchises] start in the theaters, then you can do side movies, then you can go to a series spun off from it.”
“But to just go, ‘We’re gonna build a franchise in a big, big meaningful way from streaming,’ I don’t see any evidence of that. If anything, I would argue, I see a little bit of the opposite. Some big series come out, they’re hot as heck, then two years later, they’re forgotten because there’s a hundred other series that are out. These fantastic shows are in and out in a year or two.”
It sounds like his heart is set on a theatrical release for his movie, but he’s not totally closed off to the idea of a Spawn streaming series. He said it “depends [on] the offer and what we’re talking about.”
McFarlane hasn’t really had any luck getting any of his other Spawn series projects off the ground either, though. He’s been developing a live-action Sam & Twitch series as well as two new Spawn animated shows, but nothing has really happened with those either.
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.”
When previously talking about the tone of the movie, the director promised that there would be “no joy,” and explained: “There’s gonna be no fun lines in it, and it’s just gonna be this dark, ugly two hours worth of movie, which is essentially what a lot of supernatural/horror movies are anyway. There’s not a lot of funny in them. And that seems to be a weird hurdle for a lot of people in this city to get over because they sort of go into a superhero/Avengers default all the time.”
McFarlane went on to say that this Spawn film is going to be a serious R-rated, scary, creepy movie: “My bent for what I want to do with Spawn is a lot more serious, and a lot more dark, than what people are seeing traditionally in PG-13 superhero movies. It’s just going to be a dead-serious, R-rated, scary, creepy movie. Done, period, and I’m not wavering from that. And if at some point they just go, ‘No, the only way this gets made is if we convert that,’ then we’re never gonna make it. I’ll go and beg, borrow, and steal the money, I’ll get it made. Don’t worry, I’ll get it made.”
Well, I’m happy to see he’s determined and I hope this movie actually happens one day. I’ve been really curious to see his vision for it brought to life. When talking about his take on the story, he previously 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.”
He went on to elaborate on how his Spawn movie compares to Jaws, saying: “It was sheriff Brody, the humans talking, chasing the fantastical thing that sort of made the movie, and to me, there’s that element. Everything else is normal in this story other than (gesture) the shadow moves, and at times even when it moves, the cop just sort of thinks he’s losing his mind so he doesn’t even trust that the shadow’s moving. If you’re a bad guy, then this thing is going to come and it’s going to get you.”
He also said that Spawn himself won’t talk in the movie. He’ll just be this thing lurking in the shadows. When talking about the dynamic between the two main characters in the film, he said: “Spawn is King Arthur and Twitch is Sir Lancelot, and this isn’t about physicality, or jumping over buildings. This is more a brawn and brain combination, and the first film I think of with him is The Hurt Locker, the army grunt doing the job, and that spilled out into all these roles leading up to Wind River. There was a sense of melancholy to that character that is important and that was a movie also made by a first time director, but one who wrote the thing and so wasn’t nervous about trying to get what you want. Jeremy had the experience of working with the first timer and saw that if you put a good crew together, the whole is way better than the parts and you don’t have to worry.”
What do you think about the possibility of his Spawn film being retooled as a streaming series?