The idea of Spawn returning to the big screen has come up yet again recently during the New York comic-con as Todd McFarlane weighed in on the artistic style and tone that the new movie should take.
The one and only current live action Spawn film was released in 1997 with Michael Jai White in the lead role. Overall the film is pretty terrible but there are a few things in there to like and at the time it was a moderate success that ultimately never evolved into a larger film franchise.
At the time however Spawn was a big property with the comic series (amongst others) leading the way for Image Comics, a playstation game being released, the animated series was underway and ended up running for three seasons, and of course the film was a big milestone for the character.
Since then things have quietened down somewhat for Spawn, the animated series wrapped up, the comics continued to tick over with a few spin off series coming and going at times and of course talk of a new film never quiet eventuating into anything tangible. That all said, creator Todd McFarlane is still dedicated to getting Spawn back into the cinema.
Reportedly McFarlane is on schedule to finish up work on a new script in the next couple of months, and is far more optimistic about how a new film will perform given the abundance of comic/superhero based films in the current era of movies, than what was occurring back in 1997.
McFarlane further commented that this new approach envisages the film far more as a supernatural film than a superhero film, which is something he’s hinted at in previous years. The new script sees the character spending more time in the shadows and being influential but not being the main central focus of the film. Nice to know he’s still working on the idea, whether we’ll all get to see it happen or not we’ll just have to wait and see.
