Talk of a Spawn reboot has been dragging on for well over a decade at this point, with virtually all of the information coming from Todd McFarlane and nobody else. The project is currently set up at hit factory Blumhouse and seems to be struggling to escape from development hell, despite having Academy Award winner Jamie Foxx attached to play the title character and Jeremy Renner signed on to lend support.
Outside of those two big names, there’s no other talent officially on board, although McFarlane continues to tease a major addition to the ensemble without giving too much away. As the creator of the cult comic book character, not to mention the writer and director of the reboot, it isn’t surprising that most of the talk surrounding Spawn has come straight from the 59 year-old’s mouth, but very little meaningful progress has been made in recent months.
In a new interview, producer Jason Blum once again reiterated that Spawn is a priority for his massively successful production company, but also admitted that the script is undergoing some revisions to better reflect the heightened racial and societal tensions that have been dominating the headlines recently, and shooting won’t get the green light until the writing is up to standard.
“The script has got to be right. There is a real desire for the movie, you have Jamie Foxx, and Spawn, and Todd McFarlane, and like, ‘You’ve just gotta make the movie!’. I think probably I’ve frustrated Todd a little bit, and I’ve just said, like, we don’t just have to make the movie, you know we have to make the right movie, with the right script. And it’s a hard script to get right and, you know, the recent events in the United States around race have made it even harder to get it right. You’ve got to do it really carefully and thoughtfully. So, we’re going to make the movie, definitely. I don’t know when we are going to make the movie. We are actually kind of re-tackling, we’re going down a different direction with the story than we had in the past, but we are not going to make the movie until that script is great. But one of these days it will be great and we will make it.”
Almost impressively, Blum manages to offer up new details on Spawn while simultaneously revealing absolutely nothing at all. From the sound of things, we shouldn’t be expecting the movie to start production any time soon, although most fans have come to expect these kind of delays from a reboot that was first announced in 2007, and has never been able to gather up much in the way of momentum since.