Todd McFarlane Shares Update on the ‘Spawn’ Movie [Exclusive]

I sat down with Todd McFarlane (creator of Spawn and co-creator of Venom) and asked him for details about the Spawn movie in the works with Blumhouse. The good news? Todd is taking this endeavor very seriously. He wants to make sure that it is perfect.

“It should just be really dark and gritty and unsettling. When I see examples like Obsession or Backrooms, you go, ‘The audience will consume this.’ We don’t need to do superhero. As a matter of fact… we should be trying to do something different because, again, we’re not going to have a $200 million budget like other superhero movies.”

The bad news? It might take a little while before the world sees this new Spawn movie. Todd takes this VERY seriously (I mean that as a compliment, I promise).

“We’re just still trying to get the script right,” he tells us. “I know it’s frustrating to everybody, especially me, I haven’t signed off because I just am not reading what I have in my head.”

That last bit might frustrate fans who want to see Spawn back on the silver screen, but I think it is a good sign. It shows Todd isn’t interested in rushing out some slop.

“What’s happening is people are either going too far off the reservation, or they’re being too loyal to it,” he adds. “To me, there’s nothing worse than somebody coming up to me going, ‘Hey, I’m going to do a Spawn movie, and I’m going to take your first five issues, and I’m going to redo the origin issue.’ First off, we’ve already had that movie. And second off…There’re 380 issues of Spawn. I’m telling you right now, very little of the conversation would be the first five issues. I’ve got 380 chapters. Spawn is not defined by the first four or five chapters.”

This version of Spawn has been in development with Blumhouse since 2017, with McFarlane originally writing the screenplay and planning to direct. As , () was subsequently brought in to rewrite it, so McFarlane has been opening the door to other writers for several years now.