Jamie Foxx Wants to be Spawn

Among the superheroes created in the 1990s, SPAWN is probably the one that embodies and stands as the posterboy for 90's comics; irreverent, hardcore, mysterious, and can sometimes be seen armed with really big guns. It was adapted into an immensely disappointing movie in the late 90s. Ever since that time, its creator Todd McFarlane has been working hard to redeem his creation and get a serious, hard-R-rating SPAWN movie. It looks like his chances of getting it made will be faring well this time, because Jamie Foxx has publicly expressed his wishes to take on the role of Spawn, if a new movie is to be made. Jamie Foxx has been aggressively pursuing the reboot. Will this be the push needed to get an R-Rated Spawn into theaters? [read the full article after the jump]

According to Screenrant, Foxx was on hand at the San Diego Comic-Con 2013, and thanks to his turn as ‘Electro’ in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, the actor was asked by Movies.com if there were any other projects he’s personally trying to make a reality:
“Spawn is one, yeah. And Mike Tyson. Those are two roles I would just love to do. I’m aggressively pursuing them.”

Jamie Foxx

For years, McFarlane has been working on getting a reboot off the ground after coming to the realization that his best chance for success was writing it himself, with a smaller target audience and scale, even if it meant circumventing a studio system that already bungled the property once:
“I’m 80% through the script, I did my due diligence, went around Hollywood… I listened to the pitch from all the big studios, but I just went, ‘nah, I need to make this small and tight and contained.’”

“And if we keep the budget small, they’ll allow me to do all of that. [But] if you blow up the budget… and I understand that. I wouldn’t hire me, either. But then I have to give it away.”

Jamie Foxx has been hot in Hollywood lately, he recently ignited Hollywood in Tarantino's Django Unchained, and he's also appearing in the upcoming Spider-man movie. This influence he has may fuel enough fire to finally get this Spawn project the push it needs to get out of (development) hell.

The story of SPAWN is about an assassin named Al Simmons, who was killed in action, and while he wallows in hell, missing his wife, he has made a deal with a demon, asking the demon to bring him back to Earth, so that he may see his wife again. The demon does bring Al back to Earth, but Al later realizes that the demon has returned him to Earth several years later when his wife has moved on, and not only that; Al is now endowed with demonic powers, he is a HellSpawn, meant to be a soldier, an assassin of hell. 

There was an adult-animated series of Spawn in the early 2000s which was more faithful to the comics, and ultra-violent as well.