ACTION-FLIX.COM

By: John M Jerva

Now before I go into the article at hand, let me just say that I enjoyed the 1997 version of Spawn which featured Action-Flix favorite and resident bad ass Michael Jai White in the titlular role. Many fans and critics cried foul when the film hit saying that it didn’t deliver and while it wasn’t perfect, I still enjoyed the hell out of it. Plus it had Martin Sheen as the baddie so that right there is a plus.

Spawn creator Todd McFarlane has been trying to get a Spawn redo off the ground for years now and it seemed like he was getting closer when he added Academy Award winner Jamie Foxx into the mix to play Spawn as well as MCU alum Jeremy Renner who was set to play  Detective Twitch who runs into the demonic ant-hero.

Unfortunately, there has been much drama behind the scenes over the film’s tone and content and just whe you think that McFarlane was on track, something would happen to derail it for the time being.

Fear not Spawn maniacs becuase the man himself is still on the job and he wants to reassure fans that Foxx is still in the mix to play Spawn even though an earlier interview made it sound that he was no longer involved.

In an intrview with Gamespot, McFarlane cleared up his previous statements:

It was funny because I had a couple of interviews with people I’m like, ‘You know, I got Jamie Foxx, I got Jeremy Renner, and I was close to getting the third big heavy-hitter.’ And I said I lost that heavy hitter and all of a sudden I got a call from Jamie Fox’s people going, ‘What is this headline that says you’ve lost Jamie? You don’t want Jamie?’ I didn’t say that. It was in addition to Jamie and Jeremy, right? Somebody just misheard what I said, but that’s okay. I cleaned it up.

The biggest issue with getting the film off the ground is creative differences over the tone of the film which McFarlane wants to be a serious and hard edged R rated movie but with the recent success of R rated comic book flicks like JOKER, things are getting more and more adaptable to making adult oriented comic book properties.

McFarlane added,  “I keep trying to convince people that doing a dark, serious comic book movie will work. There’s been so much success with these PG-13 movies that there’s a resistance to them in Hollywood. But since Joker came out, it proves what I’ve been saying for over two years to any executives I can talk to. Serious dark comic books can work. R-movies can succeed. So now, all of a sudden, I’ve been getting a lot of phone calls saying, “Todd, we need to talk to you about that R-rated dark thing you wanted to do.” So Joker did me a favor.”

McFarlane has also gone on the record by saying that this new movie will have no humor watsoever unlike the previous version which probably scares studio execs who will try to sell the film.

In any likelihood, Spawn is still a go and Foxx and Renner are still attached so keep it locked and loaded right here for hopefully more movement on Spawn!

In the meantime, check out Michael Jai White in action in the original version from 1997!