Jason Blum and his Blumhouse Productions are teaming up with Todd McFarlane to develop a new movie based on the comic book icon's creation, Spawn.
McFarlane has written the first draft of the script and is set to direct the project, marking a rare foray of a comic creator into the director's chair.
McFarlane became a comics superstar and one of its first artist-millionaires in the 1980s thanks to his work on Amazing Spider-Man and later was one of the founding artists of Image Comics with his creation, Spawn.
Spawn told of a black ops agent who is betrayed and killed, his soul sent to Hell for all the innocents he had killed. While there, he makes a deal with a demon who allows him to return to the earthly plane and his wife. However, five years have now passed and his wife has moved while he is a disfigured and super-powered spawn of Hell.
The comic was adapted into a New Line horror action movie that starred Michael Jai White, as well as an HBO cartoon series in the late 1990s.
McFarlane, who also became an entrepreneur with a high-end toy company, has been developing the new movie for some time and was shopping it in the spring, only recently bringing it to Blumhouse. The company is envisioning the new Spawn project as a low-budget horror movie.