Sixteen years have passed since Spawn creator Todd McFarlane announced he was going to make sure a new Spawn movie was going to be made, even if he had to produce, direct, and finance it himself. Blumhouse Productions has been helping McFarlane develop the project since 2017, and even though he had written a script himself, they’ve also hired multiple screenwriters to do further work on the script. We heard a couple of years ago that Scott Silver (Joker), Malcolm Spellman (Captain America: New World Order), and Matthew Mixom (Yesterday Was Everything) were all typing away on the script – and during a new interview with ComicBook.com, McFarlane focused on the contributions being made by Silver, saying the writer is aiming to give the new film meaning and purpose.
McFarlane told ComicBook.com, “There’s a script but the writers are, they’re not quite sort of satisfied with their own work, which is what all of us creative people are. We put it on paper and then we criticize ourselves. So they’re going through sort of an extensive sort of rework and rewrite of it. I was just on the phone a couple of days ago with Scott Silver, the guy who’s sort of manning the lead of it right now. He’s also the writer of Joker and Joker 2. We’re all planning and hoping and moving towards having this done so that we can take it out so that we can find our studio finally pre-Joker 2 launch, which comes in October. I wish everybody could hear the conversation because he is so impassioned about what he’s talking about. He is so engrossed in what he’s doing… It’s not like he’s just like, I’m just trying to get it done. It’s just not a good guy versus bad guy story… He said the other day, ‘I’d rather take a swing and it be too big of a swing then to not take a hard enough swing at it.’ He’s kind of fearless and he doesn’t want to replicate what he knows is sort of the safe, probably predictable path that most people would go because it’s the proven path, right? Just wants to bend it. He wants it because we’re gonna do R rated and we’re gonna do it and it can’t be mini-Marvel and mini-DC. It can’t.“
Whatever the meaning and purpose of the Spawn reboot may be, it goes beyond “just that the good guy won.“
Jamie Foxx has been attached to play Spawn in the new film since 2018. For a while, Jeremy Renner was attached to play homicide detective Maximilian “Twitch” Williams III, and we heard the movie might focus on Twitch after he loses his daughter to gang violence. He then begins his quest for revenge by enlisting the help of his ex-partner Danny to aid in his investigation of the criminal factions in New York. Twitch quickly realizes he’s in over his head as he learns that two of the largest organizations are teaming up to take over the criminal underworld of the city. That’s where Spawn comes in. Twitch is visited by Al, a mysterious man who has knowledge of his daughter’s death. It quickly becomes clear that Al is not who he appears to be as he reveals himself to be Spawn, a messenger from Hell who can aid Twitch in his search for justice. But that was several years ago, so the story could be completely different by this point.
Spawn previously received a feature film adaptation in 1997, but that movie didn’t go over very well. There was a well regarded animated series that ran for three seasons – and McFarlane has previously said he’s hoping to get some new animated Spawn projects off the ground. McFarlane has also said that he considers 2024 to be the make or break year for the reboot, and he has high hopes that the release of the Silver-scripted Joker: Folie à Deux will get studios eager to make Spawn.
Are you looking forward to finding out what Scott Silver, Malcolm Spellman, and Matthew Mixom have brought to the Spawn reboot script? Let us know by leaving a comment below.