During 2017's San Diego Comic-Con, it was revealed that Blumhouse and Todd McFarlane were teaming up for a new Spawn movie that McFarlane would write, direct, and produce. Now, it's confirmed that Jamie Foxx will be the actor to bring the antihero to life on screen.
The news of Foxx officially playing Spawn comes from Deadline. Foxx has been wanting to bring Spawn to life on screen for quite some time, even meeting with McFarlane around five years ago to express his deep interest in playing the comic book character. Foxx's dream will finally become a reality, as McFarlane told Deadline that he wrote the role (in the new script) with Foxx in mind.
For those unfamiliar with Spawn, the character debuted in the first issue of the Image Comics series of the same name back in 1992. A CIA operative with innocent blood on his hands, the character Al Simmons was murdered and sent to Hell, only to come back to Earth as a demonic being known as Spawn, who hunted down monsters of both the human and otherworldly variety.
According to Deadline, McFarlane has a Spawn film trilogy planned, but in the first movie, which he will direct from his own script, he told Deadline that he's going to skip the comic book origin story and dive right into the hellish world of Spawn:
"I’m not going to explain how Spawn does what he does; he is just going to do it. We’ll eventually do some of the background if we make a trilogy, but that’s not this first movie. The first movie is just saying, do you believe? And if you believe than that’s good because I’m hoping to take you for a long ride with this franchise."
The new Spawn movie will be rated R, with McFarlane expecting the budget to be in the ballpark of $10–$12 million. This version of Spawn is expected to be a man of few words, but McFarlane is looking forward to seeing Foxx bring his own unique gravity to the role with his body language and precise delivery of the sparse lines.
Spawn was previously adapted for the big screen in 1997 by director Mark A.Z. Dippé, with Michael Jai White playing the titular character, although McFarlane's film is not expected to have any connection to that adaptation.
We'll be sure to keep Daily Dead readers updated on the new Spawn movie as more details are revealed. In the meantime, are you excited to see Foxx bring Spawn to life?
Raised on a steady diet of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Derek has been fascinated with fear since he first saw ForeverWare being used on an episode of Eerie, Indiana.
When he’s not writing about horror as the Senior News Reporter for Daily Dead, Derek can be found daydreaming about the Santa Carla Boardwalk from The Lost Boys or reading Stephen King and Brian Keene novels.
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