Spawn: Sam And Twitch Show Will Not Be An Adaptation

Image Comics co-founder Todd McFarlane, who owns and serves as a producer on all things Spawn, told ComicBook during a recent interview that the forthcoming Sam & Twitch TV show not only still exists, but will not be a direct adaptation of any particular story from the fan-favorite Brian Michael Bendis, but rather using those to influence original tales by those involved with the TV series. This isn’t entirely surprising, of course: the characters have not had so many original adventures over the years that it could easily fill multiple seasons of a TV show. Still, it shows the philosophy that McFarlane and his collaborators are taking to adapting the world of Spawn to other media.

Some verison of a Sam & Twitch series has been in the works on and off for a few years. Originally, Kevin Smith was set to showrun, but that version has been inactive almost since it was first announced. In this new take, Paul Lee and Mark Roybal, who produced Mare of Easttown, are executive producing the series.

“They’re pulling from some of the stuff that has existed, obviously since 1992, some of the character,” McFarlane teased. “But again, I don’t want them to be loyal to any one story, right? I mean, if they happen to come up with something and say, ‘Hey, we want to bend.’ Which they are a little bit at the beginning on one of the stories but in the future, no, come on. This is just an extension of the comic book, which is the new tale we can tell that will make these two characters still entertaining in a good, strong drama way that we can feel the bond that these two men have and that they’re basically up against a system that’s not going to support them, right? So, they’re on their own. They’re rogue without intentionally being so because they’re going to know more than anybody else. So they’re going to have to hide it.”

The plan at present is for Twitch WIlliams to appear in the planned Spawn movie, which McFarlane has written and hopes to direct. Deals are in place for Jamie Foxx to play Spawn and Jeremy Renner to play Twitch, but talks with studios to finance McFarlane’s directorial debut have been hard to pin down. At one point, Blumhouse was interested, but it is not clear whether that deal is still on the table.