A new Spawn movie is still in development and gaining momentum according to producer Jason Blum. Spawn is a comic created by Todd McFarlane, first published in 1992 by Image Comics. In October of 2019 it became the longest-running creator-owned comic book series.
This will not be the first time Spawn has been adapted to screen. A feature film directed by Mark A.Z. Dippé and starring Michael Jai White (Arrow) and John Leguizamo (Moulin Rouge!) was released by New Line Cinema in 1997. Though it was celebrated for being one of the first solo superhero movies featuring an African-American actor and technically turned a profit at the box office, Spawn was largely criticized by viewers, gaining more notoriety as an "embrace the flaws" cult favorite with the DVD release.
Speaking with ComicBook, Blum shared there has been “an enormous amount of activity” on the new reboot, originally announced back in 2017, describing a “seismic event” in relation to the film’s development. "No new news that I'm going to reveal here, I'm sorry to tell you, but the title 'Spawn,' I've been uttering that word a lot in the last two or three weeks and we'll have more news to come,” Blum teased. He also assured fans that his utterances were not a result of cabin fever from the current pandemic and were in fact related to developments on the project: "I wanna make the movie so badly, I wouldn't put that past myself, and it's an excellent question, but in this case, I've actually been talking to other people about it.”
Such strong sentiments bode well for the film, with Blum displaying obvious excitement over the project and eagerness to move it along. Words like “seismic event” are promising as well. Some of the last information heard about the project came from McFarlane himself in March of this year, when he said he only had two conditions for the reboot. One was this version of Spawn needed an R rating (the 1997 film was edited to take the R rating down to PG-13), and the second was that he needed to direct the film. Everything else, according to him, was “up for conversation." At the same time, McFarlane announced that someone major attached to the project had been forced to step away due to scheduling, which had a financial impact on the film. Though, this latest update from Blum means it wasn't a project-killing issue.
This could be the perfect time for the Spawn reboot to come to fruition. With the influence of entities like the MCU, superhero movies have become more common for non-comic readers to watch. The success of Joker also showed a market and desire for darker and more artistic interpretations as well. The idea of placing an R-rating on Spawn does not appear to come out of wanting shock value, but the freedom to tell a story truer to the comics. Having the character’s creator in the director’s chair will also be instrumental in giving Spawn fans a movie they will enjoy, as well as a film of good enough quality to be enjoyed by those not familiar with the comics.
Source: ComicBook