If you’ve been following Todd McFarlane’s long hard road out of development hell with his brand new Spawn feature, then you know that each and every big announcement has ended with… well, nothing.
McFarlane, the creator of Spawn, had planned to direct a remake from his own screenplay, which led to several major announcements from the attachment of Blumhouse to actors Jamie Foxx and Jeremy Renner signing on to star. Even still McFarlane couldn’t get the project financed. Why? Maybe because the screenplay wasn’t very good? I know because I read it.
My sources told me time and time again that McFarlane refused to let anyone else work on the script, which is why my skepticism remained vigilant. I wanted to see Spawn back on the big screen. Shit, I even wanted to see McFarlane in the driver’s seat. But the truth always was, until the script was rewritten, Spawn was most likely never going to happen.
Pigs aren’t flying but it sure does feel like it.
McFarlane is finally admitting defeat, allowing a proven screenwriter to take a stab at the long-gestured remake that would still see the comic book artist-turned-filmmaker in the director’s chair. I, for one, am extremely excited about the news.
Brian Tucker, who penned the 2013 Russell Crowe and Mark Wahlberg crime thriller Broken City, has been hired to write the script for the feature project, says THR.
The site notes that, after all this time, it’s unclear if Foxx or Renner are still set to star, but it’s possible that “they could be re-approached after a script is written.”
This is huge, especially for fans clamoring for the return of Spawn to the big screen, as all indications here are that McFarlane is playing ball and they’ve recalibrated to get this project off the ground.
KNB’s Greg Nicotero recently revealed he has previously worked on some designs. How cool would it be to see this all finally come to fruition?!
“Spawn is centered on a black-ops agent who is betrayed and murdered and his soul sent to hell for all the innocents he 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 on, while he is a disfigured and superpowered spawn of hell,” THR reminds us.
“The comic was adapted into a 1997 New Line horror-action movie that starred Michael Jai White, as well as a late-1990s HBO cartoon series.”
