Jamie Foxx is a man who gets what he wants, and what he wants this time is a Spawn reboot. At least, he wants the lead role, that of the eponymous Spawn, known to his mother as plain old Al Simmons.
Jamie Foxx is “aggressively pursuing” – his words – that role in the Todd McFarlane-scripted reboot of Spawn. He revealed his desire for the role in an interview with Movies.com at Comic-Con, where he was promoting The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Given his upcoming roles as Electro in the aforementioned The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Benjamin Stacks in the Will Smith-helmed Annie remake, he is obviously on the lookout for grittier, meaty roles – his recent turn in Django Unchained notwithstanding.
Of course, the interest of Jamie Foxx in the role will be like dollar signs in the eyes of Spawn-creator Todd McFarlane, as having a bankable star means that, in theory, the money should come rolling in. Another factor that will play to McFarlane’s advantage is that superhero movies are so hot right now.
So hot.
Not that the return journey to the big screen has been easy so far – as far back as 2009, McFarlane said in an interview with MTV that he had redesigned the costume and:
The thing I’ve had in my head for a long time isn’t a big comic-book movie… Everything’s real; it’s like ‘The Departed,’ ‘L.A. Confidential’ or something like that — and there’s only one thing out of the ordinary in the story I’ve written, which is the thing people know as Spawn. And only a few people see it… To me, it’s more along the lines of ‘Jaws,’ where you didn’t see [the shark] for half the movie, and then you caught glimpses of him… Jaws was somewhat fantastic in that movie, and to keep it low-budget I can’t have spaceships and super-villains and all that stuff.
That was 2009. Earlier this year, MTV caught up with him and he confirmed that he had “an Oscar winner” on board, who we now know to be Jamie Foxx. Whether or not it will happen is another matter entirely, but if there was ever a time to reboot Spawn, now’s the time to do it.