‘The Walking Dead’s Greg Nicotero Reportedly Joins ‘Spawn’

The Walking Dead special effects makeup artist Greg Nicotero has boarded Todd McFarlane's Spawn reboot, Omega Underground reports.

Nicotero is credited on 1997's Mark A.Z. Dippé-directed Spawn film for crafting its animatronic creature effects and special makeup effects.

A longtime makeup artist, Nicotero got his start on legendary horror director George A. Romero's Day of the Dead in 1985 before lending his talents to such productions as Sam Raimi's Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, and Wes Craven's Scream 2.

Nicotero also served as special makeup effects supervisor on The Green Mile and provided the creature makeup effects on The Mist, both under director Frank Darabont, inaugural showrunner on The Walking Dead.

Produced by famed horror-centric Blumhouse Productions (The First Purge, Halloween), the newest incarnation of Spawn comes from creator and first time writer-director Todd McFarlane.

Academy Award winner and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 star Jamie Foxx won the lead role in May and will be joined by The Avengers and Avengers 4 star Jeremy Renner, who plays brilliant detective Twitch Williams. Despite the A-list talent in the titular role, McFarlane told ComicBook.com earlier this year the movie will focus on Williams and keep Al Simmons, better known as Spawn, in the shadows:

"When you start going into creep movies, then the camera doesn't follow the boogie man, or the monster. It follows humans, which I have in my movie," McFarlane said. "But people enjoy creepy movies and don't go, 'Oh my gosh, I wish I saw the boogie man more.' They don't do that. They just go, 'Wow, that was cool.'"

McFarlane describes the project as more "supernatural thriller" than horror and will not be an origin story for Foxx's Simmons, who in the comics was a Marine turned agent of the CIA who is murdered and later resurrected as a Hellspawn with superhuman abilities.

Nicotero is now at work on The Walking Dead season 9, where he serves as executive producer. Nicotero directed the season 9 premiere to debut this October on AMC.

Spawn has yet to stake a release date but could debut sometime in 2019.