Todd McFarlane Plans To Make Spawn A Movie Franchise

With Todd McFarlane's Spawn movie finally showing signs of life, the creator and director of the upcoming film hopes it is only the beginning of the character's new big screen saga.

McFarlane expects his Spawn movie to begin production in early 2018 and will aim to launch a new franchise loaded with possibilities for sequels and spinoffs with the R-rated adventure. Check out ComicBook.com's interview with McFarlane in the video above.

"It was the reason why I wanted to keep it small and tight," McFarlane said before pointing out the massive success of his new partner Jason Blum's work on Get Out. "You put out $3 million," McFarlane said. "If they had netted 25, it would've been a success, instead of the 300 million they got. 25 on a $3 million bet, that's not bad."

McFarlane is expecting to breeze past the $25 million mark at the box office in Spawn's opening weekend. "I think [Spawn's budget] is going to be in that 10-12 range," McFarlane said. "If we can do it and get the opening that I think we can get... If we get the same number of people that came 20 years ago, the same number of people, in today's dollars that's $40 million. There's the potential for 40 and up opening, if we've added any fans."

Based on the writer/director's projections, this will be enough to move forward with more films. "It will allow you then to go 'Let's get to the next one, let's get to the next one, let's get to the next one,'" McFarlane said.

"As I've told people, at the end of the first movie, there's two directions you can go and without boring people I won't go there, but there's two directions you can go, and we'll just decide which one we want to go to," McFarlane said. "What I don't want to do is do three or four of 'em and feel like I'm just making the same movie with a different idea, right? I like Beverley Hills Cop 1. Two is okay, but the third, I'm going, 'I've seen this movie now.'"

A release date for McFarlane's Spawn movie has not yet been revealed.