When we last heard about Todd McFarlane’s long-awaited Spawn reboot, the Image Comics co-founder stated that he wanted it to be a “dark, R-rated, scary, badass” story“. In a new interview with ComicBook.com, McFarlane backs up those claims, gives a brief update on the financial status of the project, and chooses himself as ideal director.
McFarlane hopes to move away from traditional comic book movie fare, stating that he’s “not going for the same crowd that Marvel and DC is going for; I’m going for the same crowd that horror film releases are going for. People who want to take their boyfriend or girlfriend or go out with the girls and go to the movies and get spooked.”
Part of the reason it’s taken so long for the film to get off the ground is budgetary reasons. Though, with the tremendous success of Deadpool this year, audiences proved that they’re willing to go see subversive, R-rated comic book adaptations. McFarlane hopes to direct the film himself, and understands that in order to do that, the budget has to be small enough for a studio to trust him behind the camera:
“I can argue getting money might be harder than getting everybody signed off on the story. I’ve been living with the idea for so long that I wanted to direct it, but I knew that if I gave it to Hollywood and they spent a lot of money on it then just from a practical point of view, it wouldn’t be fair for me to then say, ‘I want to direct.’ It’s not good business to spend $80 million on a movie and then give it to somebody who’s not known for directing movies – but if you can make a movie for $10 million, they’ll get a lot of less experienced directors to do those movies. So I knew I needed to keep the story and the budget both tight so that when I go to Hollywood and say, ‘I have to direct it, that’s not even a negotiation, so if you can’t accept that, then the conversation is over quickly,’ then once they understand the scope and size and budget of it, they’re like ‘Oh, okay. It’s not like Todd’s coming in here asking for $100 million and then saying let me direct the first movie. He’s saying ‘Give me $10 million to make a little horror movie and let’s see if we can scare some people. We’ve done that tons of times.'”
What do you think of a small budget, horror movie version of Spawn? Sound off in the comments below…
Originally published December 2, 2016. Updated April 11, 2018.
