In the latest update on first-time feature director Todd McFarlane‘s stalled Spawn reboot, McFarlane reveals the project has passed into the hands of another writer-director who is providing a polish before McFarlane takes the new script back to Hollywood. Now in development with Blumhouse Productions, the low-budget production arm behind Get Out and the Halloween franchise, McFarlane maintains there’s “money on the sidelines” for Spawn, and it getting made is a matter of “when,” not “if.” In May, McFarlane told ComicBook.com the delay stemmed from creative disagreements over its script, saying “everyone has a slightly different version of [the movie] in their head.”
Videos by ComicBook.com
“Right now it’s being polished by another writer-director from the script that we handed him. He’s supposed to be done with it here in a few weeks, and then once we sort of go back and forth and tighten it up a little bit, then we’re going into Hollywood and we’re gonna get a yes or no,” McFarlane told BeTerrific. “Here’s what I can tell you: I have people with money on the sidelines. There are people that are gonna help me make this movie. The question is, do we go into Hollywood, make a deal with Hollywood, go and make the production, and then come back? Or do I take the outside money, go make it, and then come back to Hollywood?”
“Either way, the movie’s coming,” McFarlane continued. “It’s not an ‘if,’ it’s a ‘when.’ I just think that it would be better for the process if we could attach one of the studios in advance, and then go put it out. Because then we’d be able to make an announcement of the release date, and a couple things that matter to the fans, knowing that it’s coming instead of making it and trying to get the release date later.”
Asked if it’s more difficult attaching other actors with no studio on board, McFarlane answered, “Yes. And the reason is because their lawyers and agents and stuff will say there’s a little bit of an unknown, so we don’t know if they’re gonna get a deal, if they do get a deal, how many theaters they’re gonna get it released in, what kind of advertising campaign, blah blah blah.”
“They like the sure thing,” he added. “So there’s leverage on the studio side, because they know that it may retain some of the talent that is either on or could come onto it.”
Spawn has so far attached Jamie Foxx as Al Simmons, who transforms into the titular Hellspawn, and Jeremy Renner as detective Twitch Williams.
McFarlane earlier revealed a mandate that there be no fun lines in Spawn, saying his supernatural thriller will be a “dark, ugly two hours worth of movie.”
“My bent for what I want to do with Spawn is a lot more serious, and a lot more dark, than what people are seeing traditionally in PG-13 superhero movies. It’s just going to be a dead-serious, R-rated, scary, creepy movie,” McFarlane said. “Done, period, and I’m not wavering from that. And if at some point they just go, ‘No, the only way this gets made is if we convert that,’ then we’re never gonna make it. I’ll go and beg, borrow, and steal the money, I’ll get it made. Don’t worry, I’ll get it made.”
