Todd McFarlane Teases ‘Badass’ & ‘Scary’ Spawn Reboot (Jamie Foxx cast)

Norrin Radd

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Todd McFarlane Says ‘Spawn’ Is A Supernatural Thriller, Not A Horror Movie

Spawn writer-director Todd McFarlane says his small-budget Blumhouse production is more “supernatural thriller” than horror movie.

“I hesitate on the word horror. I’m very specific about not using that word too much. Because it has a broad definition to a lot of people,” McFarlane told ComicBook.com.

“Horror, to my wife or to a lot of people, it means, oh, you’re gonna slaughter some co-eds in some blood bath or something,” McFarlane said. “I consider dialing it back to say it’s a supernatural thriller. So then it’s not gonna be a gore fest.”

Whatever boxes Spawn ticks, McFarlane says his movie will sell itself straight and potential moviegoers will know what it is before they go see it.

“What's gonna matter is, really, the first time they get to watch the trailer. And then, once you watch the trailer, then all the talking's over. Because, now, they're gonna see it,” McFarlane said.

“And then, at that point, they're gonna go, ‘Oh, that's either interesting or curious. I might give it a chance.’ Or, they're gonna go, ‘Yeah, you know what, I was hoping for something a little more, you know, Marvel-like.’ They're gonna visually see it. I'm not gonna be tricking anybody by saying, ‘Hey, come to my movie. It's superhero extravaganza,’ then do a dark movie behind their back. They're gonna see the trailer. Might even do three or four trailers. They're gonna see lots and lots of this. So, everybody will be personally educated as to whether they wanna walk into the theater and give it a chance by the time the movie gets there.”

The famed comic book creator said Spawn’s small budget allows more freedom not usually allotted to movies boasting larger price tags.

“So, for now, I know there's a lot of head scratching. That people sorta go, ‘I don't quite get how your movie's gonna work.’ I do,” he added.

“Again, I'm not saying it's good. I may be on a suicide trip right now. Being stubborn to a story that nobody may wanna watch. Who knows? But, like I said, if it does work, and we get some success, and by keeping the budget where we're at, then we don't need giant success for it to be in a place where we could then quickly say we're gonna be making a sequel.”

“This is the thing,” he continued, “if you spend a dollar and you make two, it's a success, right? If you spend a thousand dollars, then you gotta make two thousand for it to be a success. So, okay. Okay, let's keep the risk low. And let's go.”

McFarlane said if his rebooted movie can attract the same amount of moviegoers as the 1997 original that starred Michael Jai White as his most famous creation, his low budget Spawn can prove itself a hit.

“Math tells me that if I get the same number of people who came to the opening of Spawn number one in 1997, now that the ticket prices have more than doubled in that time, it can be a 46 million dollar opening,” McFarlane explained.

Jamie Foxx will star as Al Simmons-slash-Spawn, it was announced Tuesday. Spawn has yet to announce additional cast members or a release date.
 

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Renner cast
Jeremy Renner Joins Jamie Foxx In Todd McFarlane’s Blumhouse Pic ‘Spawn’

EXCLUSIVE: Jeremy Renner has been set to star alongside Jamie Foxx in Spawn, the Blumhouse film that marks the directorial debut of Todd McFarlane from his scripted adaptation of his comic book creation. In late May, Foxx was set to play the title character, who started out in the comics as Al Simmons, a member of a CIA black ops team who is twice betrayed: after being set up by his cohorts to be murdered with his corpse set aflame, Simmons is then double crossed in Hell. He is convinced to become a Hellspawn warrior in exchange for being able to be reunited with his wife, only to find himself stuck in his demonic creature shell, and that his wife moved on and married his best friend. Spawn turns his rage on street scum and revenge. He realized long ago that he can’t battle the constant evil permeating the globe alone, and must enlist the aid of humans to help him fight the war. Detective ‘Twitch’ Williams has the intelligence and intuition that Spawn needs most. This unconventional detective is near fearless and compliments Spawn’s demonic powers, and it is that combination that will help Spawn win his war.

“As a first time director, I wanted to surround myself with the most talent and the most skilled people I can on all fronts,” McFarlane told Deadline. “I was lucky enough to land Jason Blum and then Jamie Foxx, and I knew the person on screen the most is this police officer, Twitch Williams. We needed as strong a person as possible because he will be the face of the film. I took my naïve Hollywood approach again, and said let’s start at the top and work down. Jeremy was at the top. I’m a huge fan of his. The character doesn’t need to be a bodybuilder or GQ handsome. I was looking for somebody who’s a person you’ve met before; I needed someone who can pull off the grief of an average human being. I’ve seen Jeremy do that in more than a few of his movies. He was at the top of my list, just like Jamie.”

While Renner’s biggest grossing films are those he has made at Marvel as Hawkeye, McFarlane doesn’t go see those movies. “Spawn is King Arthur and Twitch is Sir Lancelot, and this isn’t about physicality, or jumping over buildings,” he said. “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.”

Said Jason Blum: “Jeremy is the ideal choice for Twitch Williams. He radiates honesty, intelligence and a hard-working, everyman charisma, the same qualities that make Twitch such a compelling character.”

McFarlane said the next step will be to lock a distributor to set the financing on a film that will likely carry a $10 million-$12 million budget, an R rating, and franchise potential.

“Jason and I feel we have a strong package here,” he said. “Academy Award nominated and Academy Award nominated actor. As a first time director, I guess I’m the weak link, but I think my brand is strong. Hopefully when we go to studios, fairly soon, we’ll get the interest of more than one and we can pick what place will do this project justice, marketing and distributing it. We’re going to go for as close to a green light as we can get, since the development process has already been done. We’re looking for someone to say, ‘yeah cool, we’ll take it.’ It’s a reasonable budget, we’re not asking anyone to stretch. The goal here is a quality project at reasonable price.”
 
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jay211

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They've put together a good cast. I just question McFarlane directing. But Blumhouse backing this gives me some faith. Still, why the hell is Spawn barely going to speak? Wonder how they pull that off.
 

Dominic Brehetto

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They've put together a good cast. I just question McFarlane directing. But Blumhouse backing this gives me some faith. Still, why the hell is Spawn barely going to speak? Wonder how they pull that off.
At the end of the day this all rides on Todd. Can’t blame him for the first film but this is all on his shoulders now and he will not get another shot if it fails.

Hope he’s pulls it off
 

Norrin Radd

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Todd McFarlane Says No Fun Lines In 'Spawn' Movie, Just Dark, Ugly Two Hours

Try not to get your hopes up for too much comic relief in the upcoming Spawn movie from Blumhouse and first-time director Todd McFarlane; the comic book icon says that the movie will be pretty bleak.

Spawn is a dark, violent comic that centers on a former soldier who ends up working for Hell after his death, and the version McFarlane wants to make is an R-rated take that downplays Spawn's costumed adventuring and plays up some of the horror and supernatural elements.

“There’s no joy,” McFarlane told Nerdist. “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.”

This is hardly the first time McFarlane has suggested that the movie will be a disturbing ride; he has made no bones about the fact that Spawn will be something different than the Marvel Cinematic Universe and DC Extended Universe movies.

Jamie Foxx is set to play Al Simmons, the man who becomes Spawn. Jeremy Renner will play Detective Twitch Williams, who along with his partner Sam Burke are usually the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of the Spawn Universe...but Sam isn't part of the movie, so it seems Twitch will be a little less light as well.

The Walking Dead’s Greg Nicotero and his company KNB EFX Group will develop the effects for the film. McFarlane is partnering with Blumhouse to produce. The movie still does not have a distributor, but Universal has first-look rights per the studio’s deal with Blumhouse. The film is expected to begin filming in June 2019.

"Well, you know, I'm gonna do some simple stuff that isn't with the norm," McFarlane told ComicBook.com in June. "Even just going R-rated takes it out of the PG-13 category. Now, with it being R, we've now seen a couple of examples of that. Deadpool and Logan seem to be. Venom, I think Venom is gonna be R-rated. So, I'm hoping that our category succeeds. So that it will broaden the thought process of the studio executives to go, 'Oh, it doesn't have to be something onscreen that sells a bunch of toys and T-shirts.' It can just be a something that's a little more gritty.

"For me, I know that I'm at the far end of R. Like, true drama, dark, serious R. I'm treating it as a real movie, minus the one thing that's in there that will be fantastic with this R. So, minus that, everything is gritty. There are no arch villains. There's no headquarters. There are no big ray guns. There are none of some of the trappings that we're used to in some of the other big movies."
 

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Like I said b4

Todd is absolutely delusional. He doesn't wanna listen to anybody smh
Like I said :snoop:

Spawn Movie Stalls, Director Todd McFarlane Says He Might "Walk Away"

It's nearly a year since Jamie Foxx and Jeremy Renner were announced as the stars of the Spawn movie reboot, and there have been very few updates about the project since. Now Todd McFarlane, who created the demonic anti-hero for a series of hugely popular comic books in the 1990s and is set to write and direct the movie, has spoken about the delays to the film.

In an interview with comicbook.com, McFarlane revealed that little has happened in the past year and script agreement between the film's financiers was proving to be an issue. "[We're in] about the same spot," he said. "The money's sitting on the sidelines ready to go. I just need to get everyone that wants to put in money to shake their heads to the same script.

"As you can imagine, everyone has a slightly different version of it in their head. You just go and trying to appease a handful of people while not giving in to what it is that I'm trying to do myself. Because if I have to change it too much, I'll just walk away from it all."

McFarlane's Spawn movie has been in the works for several years. In 2017 it was reported that the film would be produced by horror specialists Blumhouse Films, and that the budget would only be around $10 million, in order for McFarlane to make the film he wants. Foxx was announced in the lead role in May last year, while Renner joined as Detective "Twitch" Williams in July.

While McFarlane has not been specific about the current script issues, it doesn't exactly sound like he wants to make a crowd-pleasing comic book adventure. In an interview earlier this year, McFarlane explained that the movie would contain "no joy." He added: "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."

The Spawn comic book was first published in 1992 and was massively popular, with the first issue selling 1.7 million copies. However, the 1997 film adaptation received a negative critical reception and underperformed commercially.
 
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