Todd McFarlane Likens The Spawn Movie To Jaws

Of all the massive announcements that took place over the weekend at San Diego Comic-Con, perhaps one of the biggest for comic book fans was Todd McFarlane announcing that there would be a new Spawn movie on the way.

In addition to discussing a slew of major A-list actors who were interested in the project, McFarlane revealed to ComicBook.com that the story’s narrative structure was similar to that in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, which seemed like an unlikely inspiration.

McFarlane explained, “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. 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.”

“It was sheriff Brody, the humans talking, chasing the fantastical thing that sort of made the movie, and to me, there’s that element,” continued McFarlane. “Everything else is normal in this story other than (gesture) the shadow moves, and at times even when it moves, the cop just sort of thinks he’s losing his mind so he doesn’t even trust that the shadow’s moving. If you’re a bad guy, then this thing is going to come and it’s going to get you.”

Considering how seldom the shark in Jaws is actually seen on screen, we should anticipate Spawn to get much more screen time in the film than that, as McFarlane pointed out he’s still a major part of the film. Rather, the idea of the film, at least partially, being told from an average civilian instead of the supernatural “hero” is that similarity.

As for the actors he’s considering for the roles in the film, McFarlane teased Academy Award-winning talent, saying, “Yeah a couple approached me. Those are still on the table, and I just recently signed with CAA, the largest and biggest talent agency in Hollywood, so they’ve got lots of talent that they will sort of start pushing and funneling towards it if they think that the roles are there.”

Spawn will be coming from Blumhouse, makers of The Purge, Paranormal Activity, and The Belko Experiment. The budget will be in the $10 million range, and no release date has been announced.

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