Todd McFarlane talks new Spawn movie: he will write, direct, and produce

Last Updated on July 23, 2021

Todd McFarlane has been getting fans excited about his upcoming reboot of SPAWN, even if there has been minimal progress. Earlier this year, he compared it to a low-budget JAWS or ALIEN. In a recent chat with My DVD Insider, the comic book legend finally revealed some facts about the forthcoming picture:

McFarlane says that the new film will be R-rated, low budget endeavor. As for the script, “I’m three quarters through it. I’ll finish it and put it on a shelf for about a week. What usually happens is, I come back to it so I can see all the flaws. I do a rewrite and there’s a first draft at that point. Then I’ll start soliciting comments from people I trust to see if I can get the script into working shape. If I can’t, I’m open to someone coming in and helping me with it.

[A few studios have phoned me to talk about the project] and when I walk into these pitch meetings, I go here’s the story. I give them the broad strokes. Then I go, here’s the non-negotiable part: I write, produce, direct. That’s it. There’s only one way a studio is going to say yes, that’s if it’s a low-budget movie. To be honest, as a producer, even I wouldn’t hire myself to direct a big-budget film. There are smarter people out there. But if you’re making it for $10 million to $12 million, you’re just going to go get some schmuck director so let me be the schmuck.

In this new version, there are no supervillains, archenemies or any of that. It’s just a spook movie, something scary going bump in the night. I think I can shoot that for almost next to nothing.”

There you have it. I like that McFarlane knows exactly what he wants to do with the flick and won’t let a studio persuade him otherwise. I’m also interested to see him get behind the camera for the feature. As for an R-rated “spook movie”? Count me in!

Melinda Clarke was in the first SPAWN