Todd McFarlane has been trying to get a SPAWN reboot off the ground for quite some time, and while the project is closer to becoming a reality than it has been in years, each step forward seems to bring about another issue which forces them to take two steps back. SPAWN is due to star Jeremy Renner (AVENGERS: ENDGAME) as Detective Twitch and Jamie Foxx (SOUL) as Spawn, but during an interview with Shoryuken earlier in the week, Todd McFarlane gave some people the impression that Foxx had exited the project.
"Last week I got some discouraging news, we had an academy award-winning guy who was going to do the movie with us, but he fell off," McFarlane said. "We had people willing to fund the movie as long as we had this guy attached but schedules were conflicting, and things had to change. That’s how close we are to getting this thing off the ground." Fear not, for McFarlane set the record straight during a more recent interview with Gamespot, confirming that Jamie Foxx (and Jeremy Renner) is still onboard.
It was funny because I had a couple of interviews with people I'm like, 'You know, I got Jamie Foxx, I got Jeremy Renner, and I was close to getting the third big heavy-hitter.' And I said I lost that heavy hitter and all of a sudden I got a call from Jamie Foxx's people going, 'What is this headline that says you've lost Jamie? You don't want Jamie?' I didn't say that. It was in addition to Jamie and Jeremy, right? Somebody just misheard what I said, but that's okay. I cleaned it up.
SPAWN has experienced delays owing to creative disagreements over the R-rated script, but after JOKER was released to enormous success, McFarlane has said that interest in his SPAWN film has increased. "I keep trying to convince people that doing a dark, serious comic book movie will work," McFarlane said. "There’s been so much success with these PG-13 movies that there’s a resistance to them in Hollywood. But since Joker came out, it proves what I’ve been saying for over two years to any executives I can talk to. Serious dark comic books can work. R-movies can succeed. So now, all of a sudden, I’ve been getting a lot of phone calls saying, “Todd, we need to talk to you about that R-rated dark thing you wanted to do.” So Joker did me a favor."