Todd McFarlane About The Lessons He's Learned Getting New Spawn Movie On Track

Todd McFarlane's new Spawn reboot from Blumhouse recently added top-tier talent with some serious comic book adaptation roots to its roster. Scott Silver, who helped pen Joker; Malcolm Spellman, who is soon writing the fourth Captain America movie; and up-and-comer Matt Mixon have signed on to bring Spawn back from the dead once again.

The long-running comic book series has already spawned a live-action movie back in 1997 starring Michael Jai White, Martin Sheen, and John Leguizamo, as well as an animated series by HBO that came about at the same time. McFarlane expressed his excitement about the new additions to the project last week and is ready to get to work on this Spawn reboot, and said the collaboration process so far has been stellar.

"Everybody wants the same thing: we want the best possible movie that will reach a global audience," the Spawn creator McFarlane told GameSpot at New York Comic-Con. "If we have a successful movie I'm going to say that 99.5 percent of people have never heard of Spawn or read a Spawn comic book because somebody out there doesn't buy comics."

"What will matter to them will be them seeing 'from the producer of', 'from the director of', 'co-creator of Venom' and all come together to make this thing, 'what is it called? Spam? Prawn? Oh, Spawn!' So they might not know who Scott Silver is, but they know Joker. They don't know Malcolm Spellman, but they know Falcon and Winter Solider, or by that time Captain America 4. We'll keep adding these A-list people behind the camera [and] we'll have A-list casting by the time it's all put together."

McFarlane had actually written a treatment for the movie, originally intended to be more of a low-budget feature that he felt was "grounded" compared to the previous endeavor over 20 years ago. He explained why this version didn't work and how Jason Blum helped bring on the assistance.

"I had written a script and put it under the nose of some people and it was just getting lukewarm reactions to it. So at that point, you can improve your script or get somebody else to do it, especially somebody who has a better track record than you," McFarlane said. "So [producer] Jason Blum the producer knew Scott and he was just coming off of Joker. He's ultra-talented and has proved that R-rated comic book stuff works."

The comic book icon did express some concern over how the team will bring in the drama for the movie but doesn't want to repeat what he's done before with how he's presented the character. He went on to say that nobody else on the team wants that either.

"I'm more concerned [about whether] if he and Malcolm can do the drama. I know they can do the comic book stuff, but everybody wants to do something different where superhero movies are concerned here. Nobody on our team wants to do a $200M special effects extravaganza. I've done that move. I've seen that movie."

This new Spawn movie has been in development since 2017 with Jamie Foxx attached to play Al Simmons and Spawn. However, the other big name that's been connected to the project might not be a sure bet. Jeremy Renner's involvement at this time is unsure, as McFarlane stated that information is above his pay grade.

"I've learned is that Hollywood moves at a lot slower pace than what I'm used to," McFarlane joked. "These multi-year processes and throw that in a pandemic, it throws off my circadian rhythm. I just have to get s*** done, but that's the nature of that business. They're investing sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars and that requires a longer vetting process for things, so I get it. But while they're taking their time to get a 'yes' about anything, I'll be over here at my day job."