SPAWN Film Might Begin Shooting Next Year; Todd McFarlane To Be Heavily Involved

We might see a different type of comic book film show up in the next few years, and ironically it’s with a character we’ve already seen up on the big screen. In an interview with The Gate, creator Todd McFarlane revealed that the long anticipated Spawn remake/sequel may start shooting as early as next year. What’s been the hold-up for all these years? It turns out McFarlane plans to be so involved with this movie that his schedule just hasn’t allowed him any time to work on it.

The thing that keeps slowing it down is that the negotiation I’ve done is I write, produce, direct, but I’ve got to push a lot of my other endeavours off to the side so I can just get tunnel vision on it. And so everybody at my company is now going, ‘We’ve got to find Todd the time to finish all this.’

McFarlane stated that the new film would be quite different from the original in terms of production, stating that the shoot could go for 60-70 days. He also said that the tone would be different from the previous movie.

I think it’s a quick shoot. It’s not going to be a giant budget with a lot of special effects, it’s going to be more of a horror movie and a thriller movie, not a superhero one. I’ve got so many people phoning now that I’ve got to get it done. I’ve made some promises to people this year.

I think this is very ambitious for McFarlane, but I’m sure he’s up to the task. It’s quite rare when a creator has been this involved with a film. The only other one I can think of is Sin City, which had Frank Miller co-directing and co-producing. Yes, there has been collaboration between creators and writers with the movie studios, but very rarely do those creators and writers get their full say on what goes into the movie. Often, they just act in the advisory role and may or may not get listened to.

For McFarlane to be involved like this, we may see one of those few comic book films that adapts the source material near-perfectly, and my feelings for the character aside (I’ve never been a huge fan of Spawn), I’m excited to see how this turns out.

Tone-wise, it’s probably a good idea that the horror elements will be emphasized, but let’s keep some of that super-hero flare in the screen, all right? This is a dude sent back from Hell fighting criminals and demons wearing a necro-plasm suit and over-flowing red cape. Yeah, it can be gritty and dark, but let’s keep that element of fantasy intact.

SOURCE: The Gate