Todd McFarlane Gives Spawn Movie Reboot Update

07/07/2017 04:07 pm EDT

During a recent interview with Syfy Wire, Image Comics co-founder Todd McFarlane provided an update on the status of his planned Spawn movie reboot, indicating that he is currently pitching the first draft of his completed script around Hollywood to studios -- on the condition that they are willing to let him direct the film.

Echoing sentiments he has expressed before, McFarlane said that he intentionally wrote a smaller-scale film that he thinks could be made for less than $10 million, and that he wouldn't be asking to make his directorial debut if he thought the movie would require a massive investment on the part of a studio.

"I'd put it more into horror/suspense/supernatural genre," McFarlane told ComicBook back in 2016. "If you take the movie The Departed meets Paranormal Activity, something like that."

Months later, he would add, "It's slowly moving forward, just trying to put all the pieces together both from an artistic and a financial. The intent is trying to finance as much as possible internally and then finding partners who will help in the production of it as we move forward. I can argue getting the money might be harder than getting everybody signed off on the story. What I can tell you is what I've told everybody else: it will be a definite R. I'm not going for the same crowd that Marvel and DC is going for; I'm going for the same crowd that horror film releases going for. People who want to take their boyfriend or girlfriend or go out with the girls and go to the movies and get spooked."

That's not such a surprise; not only has Spawn always been a book that deals in the supernatural, but even before he took on a book full of angels, demons, hellspawns and Violators, McFarlane liked to bring the creepy to his mainstream work as well.

"When I started writing, even at the very beginning when they gave me a new Spider-Man book, it wasn't an accident that in my entire run on that book, the characters in it were The Lizard, Wendigo, Morbius, and Ghost Rider," McFarlane explained. "I was just putting a bunch of monsters in there because I love drawing them. Now Spawn is full of angels and demons."

Next: Todd McFarlane Still Hopes To Make Spawn/Batman II / Todd McFarlane Talks About His Role in Invasion! / See Todd McFarlane's Original Invasion!Poster / Super Fan Builds Spawn Battle Axe / Marvel Announces Venom #1 Remastered Todd McFarlane Variant

Disclosure: ComicBook is owned by CBS Interactive, a division of Paramount. Sign up for Paramount+ by clicking here.