For more than half a decade now, Spawn creator Todd McFarlane has been working to get a reboot of the Image Comics character off the ground at Blumhouse Productions. While there have been a handful of updates over those years about the project’s progress, it’s been a while since we learned where things currently stand. Well, good news for the Spawn fans out there, after a long wait, it’s been revealed that the reboot starring Jamie Foxx as the title character has received a new jolt of energy by hiring some major Marvel and DC talent.
When we last we heard in August 2021, Broken City’s Brian Tucker had been hired to rewrite the Spawn script, but over a year later, Scott Silver and Malcolm Spellman are teaming up with rising writer Matt Mixon to draft a new Spawn script for Blumhouse. Both Silver and Spellman have experience within the comic book movie space; the former co-wrote Joker and its upcoming sequel with director Todd Phillips, and the latter was the head writer on The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (which can be streamed with a Disney+ subscription) and is now penning Captain America: New World Order with Dalan Musson, who also worked on the Marvel Cinematic Universe limited series. Mixon is best known for helming the 2017 documentary Yesterday Was Everything.
In addition to sharing the news about the new Spawn writers, THR also spoke with Todd McFarlane, who wrote an earlier draft of the reboot and had been looking to direct the Blumhouse flick. However, McFarlane is now willing to drop the helming reins now that Scott Silver, Malcolm Spellman and Matt Mixon have come aboard, saying:
If we’ve got an A-list actor, A-list producers, A-list writers, then do you want to shoot for A-list directors, A-list cinematographers? The answer is, ‘of course.’ Let’s keep the momentum going.
As indicated earlier, Jamie Foxx is still expected to star in Spawn as Al Simmons, the black ops agent who is betrayed and murder, but strikes up a deal with a demon to return to Earth and exact revenge, though he is now severely disfigured and has special abilities. It was also announced in 2018 that Jeremy Renner had joined Spawn to play “Twitch” Williams, an NYPD detective who frequently crosses paths with Spawn in the comics. However, Renner’s involvement now reportedly hinges on how the new Spawn script comes together. McFarlane mentioned that while he originally intended for the Spawn reboot to be a low-budget affair, there might be a little more money thrown in now that a studio partner is being sought out.
This will be the second time that Spawn has cinematically adapted, with Michael Jai White having first portrayed the character on the big screen just five years after the Spawn comic book launched. Alas, the 1997 movie fared poorly critically and commercially, resulting in plans for a sequel being scrapped. Spawn was also voiced by Keith David in an HBO animated series that lasted 18 episodes, and the character had a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo in 2018’s Ready Player One. While the Spawn comic book continues to be published at Image Comics, Blumhouse’s Spawn reboot would certainly boost the character’s profile among the general public. So fingers crossed that with Scott Silver, Malcolm Spellman and Matt Mixon now writing Spawn, this will be the take that finally gets the reboot in front of rolling cameras.
CinemaBlend will pass along more major Spawn updates once they come in, but if you’re itching for more information about comic book film adaptations, browse through out guides detailing upcoming Marvel movies and upcoming DC movies.
