I’ve never heard anyone talk the talk as much as comic legend Todd McFarlane, who has been touting his reincarnation of Spawn for several years now. In fact, if Blumhouse hadn’t have attached themselves as producers, I’d be even more skeptical than I already am.
While the Blumhouse announcement came out of left field and surprised all of us, it added much-needed legitimacy to the long-gestured project. The momentum appeared to snowball with the attachment of Jamie Foxx as the title character and then the addition KNB’s Greg Nicotero was the icing on the cake.
That was three years ago.
In a brand new interview with the effects titan, Nicotero reveals that he actually started work on Spawn and continues to poke McFarlane about the film’s progress.
“We have designs … [McFarlane] came in, and he said, ‘Look, we’re doing this thing, and it’s going to be low budget, and it’s kind of down and dirty. And I want it to feel more like the animated show [Todd McFarlane’s Spawn], where it’s like Spawn meets David Fincher,'” Nicotero told Comicbook ahead of the San Diego Comic-Con. “He wanted to do this kind of gritty down and dirty thing. And so, we did a lot of concept work here. We did a bunch of design busts and a lot of really, really cool stuff. And then it kind of stalled.”
It sure does sound like he fell for the hype, too.
“Every once in a while, I’ll reach out and go, ‘Hey,'” Nicotero added. “I’ll look at the busts in my office and be like, ‘Hey, Todd, what’s going on with this? Are we ever going to make this?’ Because I’m really in love with the design work we did.”
The most recent update came eight months ago when Blumhouse head honcho Jason Blum told Inverse that they are still working on getting the story right.
“It’s taken longer than I hoped it would have to get the story right, but we’re still working on it,” Blum told the site at the time.
“It’s gonna be very different, it’s gonna be very edgy,” he added. “What excited me about it is that Spawn is kind of the last great unexploited comic. So that seemed like an amazing opportunity.”
As noted in the initial release, “Spawn” was the first massive launchpad for Image Comics in May of 1992. New Line Cinema would adapt the comic in 1997 with Michael Jai White starring as an elite mercenary who is killed but comes back from Hell as a reluctant soldier of the Devil. He starred alongside John Leguizamo. A “Spawn” animated series also ran from 1997-1999, totaling 18 episodes.
