EXCLUSIVE: Next Spawn Movie Will Not Be Superhero or Action Film, McFarlane Says

Todd McFarlane is going full steam ahead on a new Spawn movie, but it’s going to be very different from any interpretation of the character seen before. In an exclusive interview with ComicBook.com at Toy Fair New York, McFarlane revealed his new take on the film. He has finished the screenplay, and is currently editing it down before shopping it around Hollywood.

McFarlane opened up for the first time about the type of movie he’s hoping to make, and it’s a new take on Spawn altogether. Of course, the movie will be “a hard R,” he assures fans, but he said it won’t be a superhero, or even an action movie.

“I’d put it more into horror/suspense/supernatural genre,” McFarlane told ComicBook. “If you take the movie The Departed meets Paranormal Activity, something like that.”

The goal is to make Spawn as a character something entirely unique in the world of the new film.

“In the background, there’s this thing moving around, this boogeyman. That boogeyman just happens to be something that you and I, intellectually, know is Spawn,” he explained. “Will he look like he did in the first movie? No. Will he have a supervillain he fights? No. He’s going to be the spectre, the ghost.”

He likens Spawn’s presence in the new movie to that of the lurking evil in Japanese horror films (and their Hollywood remakes) like The Grudge or The Ring.

“I think they all work because there’s only one thing in the movie that’s not normal. There’s not five things, there’s one thing that’s the boogeyman. So that’ll be Spawn,” he said. “He’s this thing that just whooshes in, this ghost that moves and will f*** you up if you’re in the wrong place in the wrong time, and the rest of the movie will look real, and be this real drama. He’s just this ghost, this thing behind it.”

It’s a take on the character, moving even farther from the superhero comics that birthed it, that McFarlane has been wanting to explore for awhile, but it also has a practical application.

“Basically, I can make this version of the movie on a budget without crazy special effects,” he said with a slight chuckle. “I want to keep it small, keep it tight, so they’ll let me direct it!”