Todd McFarlane, the creator of the Spawn comic book series, recently revealed why he refused to pen the script for the upcoming Spawn film reboot.
"Well, it wasn't just my decision," McFarlane told CBR about Broken City screenwriter Brian Tucker being tapped to work on the script. "There's a handful of other people working on it that we haven't announced yet." McFarlane added that "a big name" who has been contributing to the script will be announced soon, noting, "I think he said he went through close to a hundred scripts by as many people as he could."
"We were looking ideally for someone that could bring a voice to the character on two levels: I'm just a white, Canadian kid," McFarlane said. "I haven't lived the life of a man in America of someone with dark skin. We thought it was important to get the perspective of somebody who has, someone with that perspective coming in and adding a slightly different bent to what you and I, as comic book readers, already know as to what Spawn is about."
McFarlane also revealed that another major reason they wanted to bring new people on board was to make sure that the film doesn't just rehash stories that have already been told in the comics or in the 1997 Spawn film.
"I didn't want to do the comic book origin story from Issues #1-3 in the movie. We were looking for people, without even telling them that, to give something a little bit different. Unfortunately, 80-90% of them, according to the other person involved who was interviewing most of them, were falling into the trap of retelling the comic book story in the movie," McFarlane explained. "We saw that movie, that movie came out 20+ years ago from New Line. So what haven't we seen that would be interesting and relevant today, both in terms of filmmaking and social content."
While the cinematic reboot of Spawn has yet to be given a release date, McFarlane also recently announced an upcoming television series about detectives Sam Burke and Twitch Williams, who first appeared in 1992's Spawn No. 1. That series is being developed by McFarlane, along with Paul Lee and Mark Roybal, the duo between HBO Max's Mare of Easttown.
The Spawn comics were also previously adapted into an adult animated series -- titled Todd McFarlane's Spawn -- which ran for three seasons from 1997 to 1999.