Todd McFarlane Updates Progress on Upcoming ‘Spawn’ Reboot

The new Spawn movie may be close to acquiring funding.

Spawn creator Todd McFarlane posted an update to Instagram. He teased the there may be some news in that area coming soon.

“Talks are heating up on getting financing for #spawnmovie … stay tuned!!!!!” McFarlane wrote.

McFarlane is both writing and directing the Spawn movie. He created the character in 1992 after leaving Marvel to help found Image Comics. The film will be his directorial debut.

Jamie Foxx is set to play Al Simmons, the man who becomes Spawn. Jeremy Renner will play Detective Twitch Williams. The Walking Dead‘s Greg Nicotero and his company KNB EFX Group will develop the effects for the film. McFarlane is partnering with Blumhouse to produce. The movie still does not have a distributor, but Universal has first-look rights per the studio’s deal with Blumhouse. The film is expected to begin filming in June 2019.

McFarlane has said that the new Spawn movie will be something different than the Marvel Cinematic Universe and DC Extended Universe movies.

“Well, you know, I’m gonna do some simple stuff that isn’t with the norm,” McFarlane told ComicBook.com in June. “Even just going R-rated takes it out of the PG-13 category. Now, with it being R, we’ve now seen a couple of examples of that. Deadpool and Logan seem to be. Venom, I think Venom is gonna be R-rated. So, I’m hoping that our category succeeds. So that it will broaden the thought process of the studio executives to go, ‘Oh, it doesn’t have to be something onscreen that sells a bunch of toys and T-shirts.’ It can just be a something that’s a little more gritty.

“For me, I know that I’m at the far end of R. Like, true drama, dark, serious R. I’m treating it as a real movie, minus the one thing that’s in there that will be fantastic with this R. So, minus that, everything is gritty. There are no arch villains. There’s no headquarters. There are no big ray guns. There are none of some of the trappings that we’re used to in some of the other big movies.”

Another difference is that the Spawn movie won’t have the big budget backing of a corporation like Disney or Warner Bros.

“Part of it is just, I don’t have the budget to write that kind of movie,” McFarlane said. “So, I go, “Okay, if I’m gonna do my own movie, then what does it have to be, to be able to convince Hollywood that I should be directing it?” Because if I wrote a big-budget movie, then not only would they not let me direct it, I wouldn’t even ask to direct it, because I don’t think that would be a deal that I’d personally take myself. ‘Hey, Todd, as a CEO in running your own corporations, we want you to spend $100 million budget, and we want to put a first time director.’ I wouldn’t take that deal.”

“So, I knew that if I was gonna try and, basically, put myself into the director’s chair, I have to make it as risk-free as possible. And, the way to do it risk-free from my perspective, is to do this type movie that’s based on the formula of creepy movies. And, again, that’s a big departure. But, look at one that just happened a couple weeks ago, which is A Quiet Place. That’s a $17 million budget that opened it up to $50 million.”

Are you excited about the Spawn movie? Let us know in the comments!