Todd McFarlane has been working on a Spawn movie for what seems like an eternity, but there have been some promising developments in recent weeks. Blumhouse’s Jason Blum recently teased the script for the movie, which is titled King Spawn, and THR reports that the search is now on for a director.
With the script in a good place, Todd McFarlane and Jason Blum will soon start meeting with potential directors for the project. Once that happens, the next step will be to approach studio partners. The report also doesn’t know if Jamie Foxx, who has been attached to star in the Spawn movie since 2018, is still involved. The actor suffered a mysterious “medical complication” last year, which required a lengthy recovery period. King Spawn is expected to be a mid-budget movie that will likely cost more than Blumhouse typically spends on a project.
McFarlane explained that the release of two major R-rated comic book movies, Deadpool & Wolverine and Joker: Folie à Deux, will hopefully help King Spawn get across the finish line. “Deadpool is a fun R. Something like Joker 2 is a serious R. Our movie is going to be super serious and dark and gritty,” McFarlane said. “It’s going to be an at times a heavy movie. If you like serious drama, with meaningful themes that are relevant and that may even some reflection of the world we live in, then this has a lot of those elements in it.“
The Spawn movie was previously slated to be directed by McFarlane himself; in fact, it was one of very few “demands” he had when shopping the project. “I have very few demands for the movie. It has to be Rated R, there’s no debate around that,” McFarlane said in 2020. “With the story I want to tell, my intent goes back to that Spawn Cloud. I am less concerned about what happens in the movie as long as Spawn is ‘cool’ and ‘badass.’ The last demand is that I am the director. That’s it. Everything else is up for conversation.” The Spawn creator obviously changed his tune regarding that last demand.
Who do you think should direct King Spawn?