Todd McFarlane Teases Casting For ‘Spawn’

Audiences know little about Todd McFarlane’s in-the-works Spawn reboot, an all-new movie featuring […]

October 21, 2017, 10:01pm

Audiences know little about Todd McFarlane‘s in-the-works Spawn reboot, an all-new movie featuring the demonic antihero, but McFarlane — who wrote and will direct the newest movie starring his fan-favorite creation — says he knows who he wants for the movie’s leading roles.

Speaking with Yahoo at New York Comic Con, McFarlane was asked if he had any actors in mind to play Spawn‘s human alter ego, Al Simmons, or any other characters.

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“I do, and I’ve talked to a couple of them,” McFarlane revealed. “I’m not going to pressure them by mentioning names. There are two big roles: There’s Al, and then there’s Twitch. I’ll be ecstatic if I get one out of the two.”

Al Simmons was a celebrated Force Recon Marine who was killed in a hit arranged by the most powerful man in the world, Jason Wynn, only to be resurrected following a Faustian pact. Despite the name Spawn, NYPD homicide detective Twitch Williams will be the main character in the reboot, as McFarlane told ComicBook.com during this year’s San Diego Comic Con:

“There’s two big roles in the script,” McFarlane shared. “There’s obviously sort of Spawn himself, although in a weird way it’s not the biggest role, and then there’s the cop. The cop is this character Twitch who’s been there since issue #1. Twitch is the role in this one, and I sort of refer to him as my Sheriff Brody, who is the sheriff in the Jaws movie. Although it was called Jaws, Jaws didn’t really talk a lot in his movie, right? He just kind of showed up at the opportune time to make the movie worthwhile.”

McFarlane said he had an Academy Award-winning actor in mind for the project, later saying he wanted Leonardo DiCaprio (The Revenant) to play the “manic” Twitch Williams.

Spawn was last brought to life by New Line Cinema in the 1997 live-action film of the same name, with star Michael Jai White. An animated series, Todd McFarlane’s Spawn, ran from 1997 to 1999 on HBO. Earlier this year, following years of development on the comic book author and artist’s end, it was learned McFarlane would be teaming with horror giant Jason Blum of Blumhouse Productions to bring Spawn back to the big screen in a “low-budget” movie.