Earlier today, Spawn creator Todd McFarlane made a promise to those attending this years New York City Comic-Con that he would post daily Facebook updates during filming to chronicle the day-in-day-out goings-on of life on the set of the planned R-rated SPAWN film. Now set to go into pre-production after the upcoming holiday season for a February production start, McFarlane says that the new movie will be “dark and R-rated,” with much more than "a couple F-bombs and a couple bare asses,” that were featured in Ryan Reynold's DEADPOOL.
McFarlane is also saying that the superhero film will evolve from a realistic drama laden with fear. “I will have a shark in black water,” he said metaphorically, “and if you’re swimming he will come and you’ll be gone and he will f*ck you up.” During his time at the annual geek-tastic event, the comic book creator also spoke about his love for dark drama by saying, “Gorky Park over Star Wars” – and how the best supernatural thrillers are those that contain otherworldly elements cast into realistic situations and settings. “John Carpenter’s The Thing minus the Thing is about dudes holed up in the North," said McFarlane.
As it was previously reported, McFarlane finished his work on the script for the new SPAWN film last year, with Jason Blum’s production company Blumhouse attached to work on the project. Unlike Blum, McFarlane does not have a first-look arrangement with Universal, so he's not entirely sure that the studio will "take" the film on. If Universal were to pass on the project, it would be shopped out to others immediately.
“The only things we need from them,” he said, “are distribution and marketing. We don’t need your input, we don’t need your cash, we don’t need your creativity – and they don’t like those deals. They always want the budget to go up because then they have to put money in it and then they own it.”
When an NYCC audience member asked McFarlane as to why he believes that he can direct the new film, he replied by saying, “I didn’t use to draw comic books and I drew comic books and I won awards. I don’t know how to read music and I have a Grammy Award. I’m spending my own money so who cares if it doesn't’t work out. It’s a $10 million budget movie, and (a studio) would just get a 22-year-old punk director. I just want to be the old punk directing it.” Ha ha ha! I like your moxy, Todd.
In addition to talking about SPAWN, McFarlane also clued NYCC guests in on the status of a few other tricks he has up his sleeve. For starters, he's recently had a meeting with Kevin Smith regarding the SAM & TWITCH TV series. Furthermore, while he can't reveal what it's for just yet, he's also just sold a script to Showtime for yet another project. Lastly, his killer McFarlane Toys division has just secured the rights to create and distribute toys based on the Netflix sci-fi series STRANGER THINGS.
We'll be sure to bring you more news about SPAWN as it happens. Until then, enjoy your Comic-Con weekend, everybody!