It feels like the film reboot of Spawn has been talked about for decades now, and according to Deadline, the movie has found its lead in Jamie Foxx. Produced by the current masters of modern horror, Blumhouse Productions, the movie will be the directorial debut of Spawn’s comic book creator Todd McFarlane from his own script. In keeping with most Blumhouse films, Spawn will carry a much lower budget than most comic book superhero movie fare.
Foxx will play the character who started out in the comics as Al Simmons, but for reasons unknown, will now be called Al Newman instead. Apparently he will still be a member of a CIA black ops team who is betrayed twice. After being set up by his comrades, Newman is double crossed again once he’s in Hell. He becomes a Hellspawn demon in exchange for being able to be reunited with his wife. Instead he ends up a disfigured creature and learns his wife moved on and married his best friend.
Bucking the trend of most modern superhero films, Spawn will not be an origin story, but begin in the middle of the action, as McFarlane says he’s “mentally exhausted by origin stories.” Not only that, but it seems the title character won’t even talk much. In the original report on Deadline, McFarlane says, “The scariest movies, from Jaws to John Carpenter’s The Thing, or The Grudge and The Ring, the boogeyman doesn’t talk. It confuses people because of the comic book industry, and because they all default into their Captain America mindset and I keep saying, no, get into John Carpenter’s mindset or Hitchcock.”
Foxx has been a huge fan of the character since Spawn debuted at Image Comics in 1992 and became one of the biggest comics of that decade. McFarlane says he had Foxx in mind when he wrote the script. The soon to shoot film is (of course) planned as the start of a trilogy.
What do you make of Foxx as McFarlane’s Hellspawn? Let us know in the comments below.
Images: Image Comics / Sony Pictures
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