Spawn: Todd McFarlane Explains Why He Went To Blumhouse

During Comic-Con International: San Diego, Spawn fans got the news they’ve been waiting for when it was announced that the new Spawn movie had found a home with Blumhouse.

ComicBook.com caught up with Spawn creator Todd McFarlane at the show to find out how Spawn ended up at Blumhouse and he gave us the entire, decades long tale.

“It started, essentially, the day after the last movie, McFarlane says. “Every movie, if you like it, you go, ‘When’s the next one coming?’ But it’s been 20 years now. I went off and we started Image and I got involved with my toy company and got distracted for a while and then formulated the idea and thought about it for a while and started writing in fits and starts because I still had the other businesses I was running.

“Eventually, I had to get past the theoretical,” McFarlane continues. “For years it was, ‘Well, I’m working on the script,’ which I was…You have to get to the point where you’re working towards a movie in the truest sense.”

That’s when McFarlane went to producer Jason Blum, who runs Blumhouse, the studio behind Paranormal Activity, The Purge, Insidious, Split, and Get Out.

“Jason’s brand with Blumhouse Productions has been these R-rated, low budget, scary, cool movies that are successful, and they work, and they allow you then to make another movie.

“The thought was always, and I never moved off it, was that I’d write, produce, and direct, which I will…So now I needed to surround myself with people that were going to make me look good and one of the first steps is to get a good production house – and it sounds silly what I’m about to say – that can make a low budget movie.”

McFarlane knew that Spawn wasn’t a good fit for the larger studios, saying, “Big studios have such a high overhead that the moment you walk in the door they go, ‘We can’t make anything under $24 million.”

That was fine with him since he didn’t see Spawn being a PG-13 blockbuster with “ray guns” and “a car” and “arch villains.”

“It’s just going to be this dark, gritty world, and there’s going to be one thing in the entire world that is fantastic and it’s going to be Spawn,” McFarlane says. “I’d call it a dark supernatural thriller.”

That description fits with how McFarlane has compared the movie to Jaws.

The new Spawn movie is still without a release date.

More Spawn News: Twitch Will Be The Main Character of the Spawn Movie / McFarlane Planning Full Return To Spawn Comics / McFarlane Not Planning Any Toys Based On The Spawn Movie / McFarlane Wants Leonardo DiCaprio For The Spawn Movie