Spawn Movie Was Only 30 Pages Away From Being Finished Before Strike (Exclusive)

Todd McFarlane has a big update on the Spawn movie. Spawn is a pretty beloved comic book character created by Todd McFarlane and was also one of the earliest characters to get a movie adaptation. Unfortunately, this was before Hollywood was willing to consistently commit to R-rated superhero movies and while the genre was still undergoing some growing pains. The movie was a critical bomb, but it made a decent amount at the box office. A sequel was planned, but never came to be. Instead, McFarlane would move on to reboot. Over a decade later, McFarlane still has ambitious plans to bring the Spawn movie to life.

Now, after years of updates of varying degrees, it seems like it's the closest it has ever been to actually happening. Jamie Foxx is onboard to star in it, a script is being written by the likes of Scott Silver, Malcom Spellman, and Matthew Mixon, and Blumhouse is also involved in the production. When speaking to ComicBook about Spawn coming to Call of Duty next week, Todd McFarlane noted the writers have just 30 pages left to write in the script, but were obviously halted by the strike. He expects the script will be finished relatively soon after the strike ends.

"We were in the middle of writing the script and then the writers strike came," said McFarlane. "So that basically came to a screeching halt, if you will. But they were pretty far along in it, so I'm assuming that they've given it a lot of thought during the strike. They know what they're going to write, the last 30 pages, which is all they need to finish. And so as soon as the strike's over, I'm assuming they're going to quickly finish that up. We will do some rewrites. We'll go into Hollywood. We'll find a buyer, maybe we'll find a couple of buyers, get into a bidding war. And then we'll come back out and make the announcement that says, 'We've got the funding, the studio, and the production date all lined up. It's go time.'"

McFarlane noted that they had expected to get the ball rolling by the fall at the latest and give fans an update on the movie at New York Comic-Con alongside the Call of Duty news, but that didn't pan out. 

"We were hoping, minus the strike, that was going to happen this summer, at the latest, this fall. That we would be able to, in a perfect world, I was going to have the movie and the Call of Duty news at New York Comic Con. And there would just be a one, two, and we would've owned the news cycle at New York Comic Con. But Spawn coming in Call of Duty is going to be a giant piece anyways on its own. And it's just, hopefully, in quick order, if we can follow it up with some movie noise, then it will just keep the ball rolling."