Todd McFarlane Shares An Early Estimate Of Spawn’s Runtime

Blumhouse’s gestating Spawn reboot won’t be quite two hours in length – but it also won’t be 90 minutes.

That’s the news from ComicBook.com, who caught up with seasoned scribe Todd McFarlane, the brains behind Albert Francis “Al” Simmons, to discuss cameos, casting and the possibility of an uncut version (spoilers: don’t hold your breath for the latter).

When pressed about an actual, tangible runtime, though, McFarlane admitted that it’s far too early to begin talking numbers. But if he had to guess, Spawn will likely fall somewhere between 90 minutes and two hours – or just under.

Technically, every story should have its own length; here’s how it works in Hollywood, as you know. They look at it that a page is a minute, right? So if you give them a 120-page script, they go ‘Okay, it’s a two-hour movie,’ and so historically Hollywood wants 120 pages. I know when I first finished [the script] it was 167, which is startling to some people, and then I whittled down to about 137, and then once I brought Jason Blum and Blumhouse on, we’ve been going back and forth working on it. And so the one that we’re now calling the final draft is, I believe, 115 pages?

It’s yet to be determined, of course, but a taut, 90-minute thriller beats out a bloated blockbuster any day of the week, so we’re hopeful that Todd McFarlane, Jason Blum and the rest of the team at Blumhouse don’t hesitate when trimming the story of Al Simmons’ big-screen debut.

McFarlane added:

I think because I’m writing for myself, I’m writing a little bit of exposition so that you, or an actor, or a manager, can read it and understand it; but in my mind, that thing that took four sentences is going to happen in [snaps fingers] maybe two-and-a-half seconds? So I don’t think it’s going to be a full two hours – just a little bit short of that – but it won’t be ninety minutes. It’ll be longer than ninety minutes.

Currently in the midst of casting its ensemble, Todd McFarlane’s “dark and heavy” Spawn reboot will likely go before the cameras sometime this year ahead of its launch in 2019. Indeed, the writer-director has already set sights on the Halloween window or, failing that, a mid-winter corridor that’s situated between Hollywood’s awards season and the annual onslaught of blockbusters.