Todd McFarlane Updates Spawn Movie Status

Over the next week, we’ll be running parts of an exclusive interview that Comicbook.com did with McFarlane Toys Founder and Spawn Creator Todd McFarlane. On February 1, 2014, McFarlane will be doing a signing of Joe Namath NFL Legends and Eli Manning NFL Super Bowl figures at the Times Square Toys “R” Us store, as part of special events the store is doing around Super Bowl XLVIII.Also, next week, we’ll have a giveaway, where one lucky reader will win Joe Namath and Eli Manning McFarlane Sports figures autographed by Todd McFarlane, so be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ to keep up with the latest news.In our interview with Todd McFarlane, he discussed everything from McFarlane Toys to the Spawn movie to the comic book industry. For the first part of the interview, we’ve got an update on the status of the Spawn movie reboot, which is a different take on the character from the 1997 Spawn movie. In previous interviews, McFarlane has described the film as a horror movie, not a superhero movie.Comicbook.com: Last I read about the Spawn movie, you were working on a script, it might start shooting this year, and Jamie Foxx was interested. Are there any more updates on the Spawn movie status?Todd McFarlane: Yeah, I was hoping I could have gave myself a deadline to get stuff done by the end of December, beginning of January, and I’m not quite there. Although, one of the things that takes up a lot of my time besides work is I manage a baseball team and that occupies a lot of my spare time. The boys are fourteen, and a couple of them are going into high school, and the rest of them will be trying out for school ball here in the next week. The last year we played year round. I’m going to be shutting it down so the boys can go and play school ball. So as much as I’ll probably have withdrawals because I’m not hanging around the ball field as much, it will actually give me that time to finish up the final touches on the script.Comicbook.com: Will it be “PG-13” or are you going for an “R” Rating?Todd McFarlane: It will be a definite “R.” Not so much that I tell people…  I don’t want “R” to do excessive violence or nudie people or any of that. It’s just that some of the content, which is sort of street thug and police officers, you’re getting into some dark and gritty 2 AM in the morning bad guy stuff. That conversation, it doesn’t lend itself to being PG-13. Those types of people, those types of characters have a certain vernacular that they speak with, so you can’t do it, right. So you have to dip into “R” rated, just to be actually able to do characters in the proper fashion. Again, I don’t know if anybody could do a mafia story and not make it “R,” just because of the way people talk. And once you start using a couple curse words, it sort of crosses over into that in the film ratings anyway.Comicbook.com: I know Jamie Foxx has said he’s interested. Are there any other actors or actresses that have expressed interest in the casting?Todd McFarlane:  Yeah, I’ve had a couple. You know, over the years, I’ve had agents and managers phone me to say, “Hey Todd, what are you doing with it? What’s the status of it? We have interest in it.” The majority of it doesn’t necessarily come from the actors to start with. It comes from the production houses and the big studios. And then once you sort of get something off the ground, and the actors then know that there’s something being developed in a serious fashion, then that’s when sometimes they’ll start popping their head out of the ground and taking a look at things. And/or their agents inquiring about it. It usually works where you go get the machinery moving and you start looking for the actors and everybody else a little bit later. So there’s been a couple that have already expressed interest, but that’s sort of way ahead of the game. But it’s good for the project to know that there’s well-thought of people, great talent that are maybe willing to lend a helping hand.Keep checking back for more from Todd McFarlane over the upcoming week.