Oscar-Winning Talent Seemingly In The Mix For Spawn Movie; Todd McFarlane Cites Jaws As A Reference Point

It’s small wonder why comic book fans, and indeed moviegoers in general, look toward San Diego Comic-Con as though it was Christmas Day.

With its star-studded panels and almighty sense of spectacle – Hall H alone is almost a landmark in and of itself – SDCC is considered as one of, if not the biggest geek-friendly events on Hollywood’s calendar, and 2017 was no different. But beneath all of the commotion caused by Justice League, Avengers: Infinity War, and the Brie Larson-fronted Captain Marvel and its ’90s setting, Todd McFarlane delivered the latest status report for his long-brewing Spawn reboot.

Word comes by way of ComicBook.com, who caught up with the scribe at SDCC to discuss his “dark” and “nasty” reimagining of the titular anti-hero. Without a start date to call its own, Spawn is still deep in stasis, but fans can at least take solace in the fact that the adaptation has now taken flight at Blumhouse.

As for this latest piece of intel, McFarlane told the folks at ComicBook.com that Oscar-winning talent has approached him about the possibility of headlining his long-in-development comic book flick. Not only that, but it would appear those unnamed stars are still in the mix.

Yeah a couple approached me. Those are still on the table, and I just recently signed with CAA, the largest and biggest talent agency in Hollywood, so they’ve got lots of talent that they will sort of start pushing and funneling towards it if they think that the roles are there.

And though Spawn may be the title star, in the current script, the infamous demon actually takes a backseat when the story gets going in earnest. It’s for this reason that Todd McFarlane compared the set-up of his movie to that of Jaws, where Brody and Co. hunt a fantastical creature for most of the movie.

There’s two big roles in the script. There’s obviously sort of Spawn himself, although in a weird way it’s not the biggest role, and then there’s the cop. The cop is this character Twitch who’s been there since issue #1. Twitch is the role in this one, and I sort of refer to him as my sheriff Brody, who is the sheriff in the Jaws movie. Although it was called Jaws, Jaws didn’t really talk a lot in his movie, right? He just kind of showed up at the opportune time to make the movie worthwhile.

Angled to be a low-budget horror flick – hence the decision to partner with Blumhouse – Spawn is still gestating in development, but what do you make of McFarlane’s latest update? Let us know in the usual place.