Todd McFarlane Reveals His Horror Inspiration For Upcoming Spawn Movie!
For fans of the iconic character it’s been one hell of a week. A few days ago comic book artist and creator Todd McFarlane announced that he was set to write and direct an R-Rated feature based on his hit, Spawn.
In an interview with Comicbook.com, McFarlane opens up about one of his key influences. It might come as a surprise to some but it’s the classic Jaws. If you think about it, Jaws did send an entire generation into a panic at the beach. McFarlane wants to tap into that unique dynamic where a monster is able to terrorize a town during tourist season. He wants to instill a primal fear.
McFarlane stated: “There’s two big roles in the script; There’s obviously sort of Spawn himself, although in a weird way it’s not the biggest role, and then there’s the cop. The cop is this character Twitch who’s been there since issue #1. Twitch is the role in this one, and I sort of refer to him as my sheriff Brody, who is the sheriff in the Jaws movie. Although it was called Jaws, Jaws didn’t really talk a lot in his movie, right? He just kind of showed up at the opportune time to make the movie worthwhile.”
McFarlane fleshed this out, “Everything else is normal in this story other than (gesture) the shadow moves, and at times even when it moves, the cop just sort of thinks he’s losing his mind so he doesn’t even trust that the shadow’s moving. If you’re a bad guy, then this thing is going to come and it’s going to get you.”
With this in mind it seems the character Spawn himself will act more as a background character or a plot device to move the film along instead of of the main focus. If this ends up the case it would be a big change from the comic book version, which sees Spawn deliver out of justice.
In the comics, Spawn is a former black ops operator named Al Simomons, who spent years killing in the name of country, only to find out that what he thought was meting out justice, really wasn’t. Simmons is eventually murdered by members of his own unit and descends into the depths of hell. There he’s given a crucial choice, become a hell spawn and do hell’s work and return to earth, or rot in the underworld. Spawn was created by Todd McFarlane and was first published in 1992.
As of today McFarlane hasn’t given out much more details about the upcoming Spawn reboot. Though he mentioned he’s considering collaboration options as well as looking into the talent who will take up the mantle of Spawn.
McFarlane touched on potential Spawn actors, “Yeah a couple approached me. Those are still on the table, and I just recently signed with CAA, the largest and biggest talent agency in Hollywood, so they’ve got lots of talent that they will sort of start pushing and funneling towards it if they think that the roles are there.”
The movie will be produced by Blumhouse Productions, which is known for this years hit Get Out, and the Purge series. Comicbook.com notes the budget for the film will be in the $10 million range. No release date is available at this time.
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