Spawn has been a big deal since the 90’s but has yet to have a film do it justice on the big screen. The 2019 scheduled reboot has tabbed Jamie Foxx as it’s leading man to change the narrative.
Todd McFarlane, who will be making his directorial debut, handpicked Foxx after having him in my mind for the role for quite some time. “Jamie came to my office five years ago, and he had an idea about Spawn” said McFarlane, “we talked about it, I never forgot him, and when I was writing this script, you sort of plug people in, and he was my visual guy and I never let go of him.”
What to expect? McFarlane, who created Spawn in 1992, spoke with Deadline after confirming Foxx’s leading role.
“If you want to see something creepy and powerful where you go, just what the hell was that? I’m not going to explain how Spawn does what he does; he is just going to do it,” McFarlane told Deadline. “We’ll eventually do some of the background if we make a trilogy, but that’s not this first movie. The first movie is just saying, do you believe? And if you believe than that’s good because I’m hoping to take you for a long ride with this franchise.”
McFarlane also explained that the story will being in media res – and that Spawn himself will be more of a silent movie monster than a superhero.
“The scariest movies, from Jaws to John Carpenter’s The Thing, or The Grudge and The Ring, the boogeyman doesn’t talk,” McFarlane said. “It confuses people because of the comic book industry, and because they all default into their Captain America mindset and I keep saying, no, get into John Carpenter’s mindset or Hitchcock. This is not a man in a rubber suit, it’s not a hero that’s going to come and save the damsel. It’s none of that. At the end of the movie, I’m hoping that the audience will say either, is this a ghost that turns into a man, or is it a man that turns into a ghost? I’ve got a trilogy in mind here, and I’m not inclined in this first movie to do an origin story. I’m mentally exhausted from origin stories.”
The multi-talented Jamie Foxx backed by McFarlane appears to be a winning combination. The amount of dialogue for the Spawn character remains unclear at the moment.