Todd McFarlane has finally completed the first draft to the long promised new Spawn film, but if you’re looking for another comic book/superhero film, you’ll be disappointed. Here is how McFarlane described the film to ComicBook.com:
“I’d put it more into the horror/suspense/supernatural genre. If you take the movie The Departed meets Paranormal Activity, something like that…In the background, there’s this thing moving around, this boogeyman. That boogeyman just happens to be something that you and I, intellectually, know is Spawn. Will he look like he did in the first movie? No. Will he have a supervillain he fights? No. He’s going to be the specter, the ghost.”
McFarlane is comparing it to Japanese horror films like The Grudge and The Ring:
“I think they all work because there’s only one thing in the movie that’s not normal. There’s not five things, there’s one thing that’s the boogeyman. So that’ll be Spawn. He’s this thing that just whooshes in, this ghost that moves and will f*** you up if you’re in the wrong place in the wrong time, and the rest of the movie will look real, and be this real drama. He’s just this ghost, this thing behind it.”
The serie creator sounds like he’s moving away a bit from the series he created over twenty years ago. In addition to writing the script, he will also be making his directing debut.
“Basically, I can make this version of the movie on a budget without crazy special effects. I want to keep it small, keep it tight, so they’ll let me direct it!”
The 1997 Spawn film starring Michael Jai White wasn’t terribly good, to no fault of White. He made a pretty good Al Simmons/Spawn, but the movie was made about fifteen years to early. It it was also a rated PG-13 wheras McFarlane’s film will be a “hard R,” which is more fitting to the comic. It sounds like McFarlane has a pretty good grasp on how to make this one better (step one- no Leguizamo).
