Everything in ‘Spawn’ Movie Will Be From Comics or HBO Series

Spawn creator Todd McFarlane, who will be scripting and directing a rebooted take on his demonic anti-hero under Blumhouse, says the upcoming movie will borrow heavily from McFarlane’s comic book and animated HBO miniseries Todd McFarlane’s Spawn.

“It’s either gonna be a surprise and people are gonna go, ‘Wow, that was different,’ or they’re gonna go, ‘Todd, what the hell were you thinking?’” McFarlane said during a Q&A panel at ACE Comic Con Sunday.

“And I understand the concept that there are lots of potential fans over the last 25 years that go, ‘Well, I don’t understand why you’re doing this,’” McFarlane said.

“Let me also say, there will be nothing in this movie that has not been in the comic book at some point, or in the HBO [animated series] at some point. I could show you the pages. I’m just culling it down.”

McFarlane, who says his film won’t be a superhero movie, described his take as “a dark, nasty, R-rated, scary, creepy, messed up movie.”

“It will be dark and heavy, serious, R-rated. It won’t be a superhero movie. I don’t think most people would categorize it as that,” McFarlane promises.

“It will be a supernatural thriller, like a lot of good creep movies. The only thing in the movie that’s fantastic is Spawn, and anything else is otherwise normal.”

The small-budget horror comes from hit-makers Blumhouse Productions, the studio behind low budget hits Insidious, The Visit, and Get Out.

The writer-director hopes to turn Spawn into a franchise.

Producer Jason Blum said Blumhouse is keeping the scope of the script “relatively contained,” and McFarlane, who is eyeing some “big A-list actors,” has already approached some actors about taking on the roles of Al Simmons and Detective Twitch Williams.

“There’s two big roles in the script. There’s obviously sort of Spawn himself, although in a weird way it’s not the biggest role, and then there’s the cop,” McFarlane explained, calling Twitch his “Sheriff Brody” from Steven Spielberg’s Jaws.

“Although it was called Jaws, Jaws didn’t really talk a lot in his movie, right?” McFarlane said. “He just kind of showed up at the opportune time to make the movie worthwhile.”

Spawn has yet to mark a release date.