Todd McFarlane, co-founder of Image Comics and the creative mind behind the famed anti-hero known as Spawn, has been bigging up his live-action reboot in some capacity for years. The latest status report came back in February, when the decorated scribe pitched the new, long-gestating and “hard R” redo as Paranormal Activity meets The Departed, but all has been quiet ever since.
Until now, that is. In an upcoming episode of Geeking Out (via ComicBook.com), McFarlane was quizzed about whether fans can expect a new interpretation of Spawn some time in the near future, to which he replied: “The simple answer is yes.” Alas, the artist stopped short of revealing how far along that vision is to becoming a reality, but when it does, it’ll feature “a dark, R-rated, scary, badass sort of script.”
Keen to drive home the point that this new movie won’t be a sequel to the Spawn of ’97, McFarlane’s comments align with his previous interview with ComicBook, where he revealed that he was in possession of a finished script. That was six months ago, indicating that filming may not be too far off.
“In the background, there’s this thing moving around, this boogeyman. That boogeyman just happens to be something that you and I, intellectually, know is Spawn. Will he look like he did in the first movie? No. Will he have a supervillain he fights? No. He’s going to be the spectre, the ghost.”
Cast your mind back a little further and you’ll likely recall that Jamie Foxx was once “aggressively pursuing” the title role in McFarlane’s Spawn redo, but in a manner that has almost become emblematic of the project itself, that chatter fell by the wayside before it could gain any traction. If and when it does, it seems the reboot will double down on practical effects.
“You’re never going to see a dude in a rubber suit,” McFarlane says in the video. “This is going to be my Jaws shark.”