SPAWN Reboot will be a Horror Movie

Todd McFarlane’s comic creation SPAWN has had the misfortune of having been picked up for a movie adaptation in a time when superhero movies were not yet fully accepted by the mainstream and by big studio executives as a material for a good serious movie. the 1997 adaptation of SPAWN was ridiculous, silly, dull, and bastardized McFarlane's creation.

A movie reboot of SPAWN has been talked about for many years, first as a sequel to the 1997 movie which starred Michael Jai White in the lead role, then later as a full reboot. Now it seems that Spawn could be the R-rated anti-hero to lead the comic book bad boy revolution, as McFarlane says that he’s set deadlines to turn in a script by the end of the year, and to begin filming in 2014. [hit the jump to continue]

Speaking to The Gate, McFarlane admitted that what has recently been slowing down Spawn‘s development is his own preoccupation, rather than lack of interest from studios or financiers. Ever since Jamie Foxx has come out to say that he’s “aggressively pursuing” the lead role in Spawn, the weight of an Oscar-winning actor has been on Spawn’s side. All that McFarlane needs to do now is finish the script:

“The thing that keeps slowing it down is that the negotiation I’ve done is I write, produce, direct, but I’ve got to push a lot of my other endeavors off to the side so I can just get tunnel vision on it. Everybody at my company is now going, ‘We’ve got to find Todd the time to finish all this.’”

Since the titular character of Spawn, also known as Al Simmons, burns to death in a fiery inferno before returning to Earth as a disfigured but extremely deadly hellspawn, there’s plenty in the source material that could earn an R rating in a faithful movie adaptation. However, since movies with more mature ratings inevitably snip off some of the potential box office take from younger audiences, this would make Spawn more of a financial risk.