R-Rated Spawn Movie in Development

CBR

Todd McFarlane to Write, Direct R-Rated Spawn Movie for Blumhouse

By Anthony Couto

Published Jul 21, 2017

The team behind Paranormal Activity, The Purge, Sinister and Get Out is producing an R-rated big screen adaptation of Todd McFarlane's Spawn.

UPDATE 5:29pm ET: Various sites, including EW, TheWrap and Deadline, are reporting that McFarlane will indeed write and direct the Spawn movie reboot. Interestingly, McFarlane didn't make mention of this in his Facebook LIVE announcement. This would mark McFarlane's feature film debut; he previously helmed music videos.

“Having worked with many visionary directors, I think Todd’s unique artistic talents will only add to his role as director of this film,” Blum said in a statement.

Original Story: Blumhouse Productions' Jason Blum has signed on to produce a Spawn movie reboot that will reportedly be R-rated.

Spawn creator Todd McFarlane announced the news in a Facebook LIVE video (featuring Kevin Smith) straight from Comic-Con International in San Diego.

Blumhouse Productions is responsible for a stable of popular horror films from the last decade, including Paranormal Activity, Insidious, The Purge, Sinister, Split and Get Out.

McFarlane previously indicated a script was complete for the film. "Today, the official news is the script is done, at least the first rough draft,” McFarlane announced in a video message back in May. “As you can see here, it’s actually been done for a couple months,” he continued. “The initial rough draft was about 182 pages. That’s way too long for Hollywood. They like it to be about 120 pages… I now have it down to 136 pages. I’ll knock out about another ten or twelve pages out of that, and we’ll get it there.”

The original Spawn movie, which starred Michael Jai White and John Leguizamo, came out in 1997 and was the title character’s big-screen debut. While the film was moderately successful financially, it received negative reviews from critics and holds an 18% on Rotten Tomatoes. MacFarlane has said several times that the new film would be different from other superhero movies and fall into the horror/suspense genre.

Spawn #1 was published in May 1992. The series recounts the story of Albert Francis Simmons, a CIA operative who is recruited into the shadowy world of covert operations. Simmons is murdered by one of his squad mates on a mission and is sent to Hell because of his murderous life choices. In Hell, Simmons is contracted by the demonic Malebolgia to become a Hellspawn, the foot troops of the fiery dimension.