We’ve been hearing rumors of a ‘Spawn’ reboot for awhile now and Todd McFarlane had some time to weigh in on it and had a few words to say on the original film as well.
With comic book movies all the rage at the moment and the recent Batman trilogy proving that darker heroes have a place in today’s cinema – it’s the perfect time to look at one of the darkest heroes created to date: Spawn. In fact, when asked about the progress of the ‘Spawn’ reboot, McFarlane said that he’s looking “to have the script done hopefully in the next couple of months. I’ve talked to a couple of producers – can we get shooting by the end of the year if I can get that script in good order? But it’s a complete reboot.” With this being a darker movie, you have to keep in mind that “It’s a ten-million-dollar, R-rated supernatural movie that takes all the superhero stuff out of it. So for people who want to go see an ‘Iron Man’ redo, that’s not it. For people who like ‘The Conjuring,’ then it’s going to be right up that alley.”
When bringing up ‘The Conjuring‘ as a comparison and knowing that it deals with a man who sold his soul to the devil, you would think that the reboot would be a horror film. However McFarlane says that it’s “not “horror.”
“Because that’s a weird word, right? Supernatural thriller. I grew up on things like ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ and ‘The Omen’ things like that. Those movies only had one fantastic element in [them], and it was the supernatural or the ghost, and everything else in the world was normal. With superheroes, you have to have the hero, the super-villain, the fantastic headquarters, sometimes even the sidekick and you get more and more fantastic. This is just going to be ‘The Departed’ and ‘L.A. Confidential’ with a ghost moving around in it.”
When asked about Jamie Foxx‘s (‘Amazing Spider-Man 2‘) interest in portraying the human side of spawn, McFarlane confides:
“… thought we were going to keep it on the q.t. I’ve talked to some pretty high-profile actors. I think he’s just putting the pressure on me to get the script done. So I sold him on my pitch. I go, “Here, I’ve got an idea that could keep you in the ‘Spawn’ movies for twenty years, but it can’t be about physicality. It has to be more about a little bit of acting and then this specter, this sentinel, that moves around in an otherwise hard drama movie.”
The original ‘Spawn’ came out in 1997 and had a lot of issues. It was never an easy sell for most of the fans out there to digest and having a few years to reflect on it, McFarlane feels he knows what he has done wrong and what he will change in the next iteration of the film:
“I mean, we had a first-time producer, first-time director, first time I was involved, and so we did as good as we could, given the inexperience that we had. So I thought on a scale of one to ten, it was a five. It probably would have done better if it had come out in the midst of all the superhero stuff, because we were sort of a little bit ahead of the curve, and some of the special effects weren’t quite up to the standards that they are right now, so it was what it was. I wasn’t in charge. Would I have made some changes? Absolutely. I made a deal where I let other people do it. So the next one will be the small-budget one. What when I go to meetings [about SPAWN], there is only one non-negotiable. I write, produce, direct. And the only way you’re going to say “Yes” is if we keep the budget down and I deliver this R-rated, cool – because I’ve had way more people say they enjoyed the HBO version, which was a little bit darker and grittier, than the PG-13 film.”
So are you a little more excited for the next ‘Spawn’ knowing that it’ll be R rated and will be planned as a suspense film?
Source: Assignment X
