‘Spawn’ to Be a Game Changer for Comic Book Movies According to Creator

With the ever abundance of comic book movies to come out in the past decade, some criticize these comic book superhero movies as being nothing new. This creates for some over-saturation of very similar superhero movies coming out in recent memory for a lot of audiences. One character that is said to change that however is one of the most iconic non-Marvel or DC Superheroes ever created, Spawn.

Created by Todd MacFarlane in 1992 with Image Comics publishing it, Spawn is about a CIA agent named Al Simmons who was killed and sent straight to hell. Simmons was given an opportunity to return to Earth, however as a demon with supernatural powers and uses them to fight crime and other supernatural monsters causing disruption to the world. The character was known for being dark, gritty and incredibly violent in the comics and paved a way for a new era of ultra violent comics in the media. Spawn did have a movie in 1997, but only had one with the film being a critical and box office flop, even for the time period.

With Comic Book Superhero movies being more popular than ever now, an attempt to reboot Spawn is in the works for the silver screen. This time, Todd MacFarlane himself has been given the opportunity to write a script being produced by Blumhouse and starring Jamie Foxx as the title character. Not to mention, given the success of more R-Rated Comic Book movies such as Deadpool, this new Spawn movie will go in the vain of that being a full fledged R-rated movie.

In a recent interview with Nerdist, MacFarlane exclaims that Spawn will be very different from previous comic book movies from this decade. He stated that, “There is gonna be no funny lines in it, it’s just gonna be this dark, ugly two hours worth of movie, which is essentially what a lot of supernatural/horror movies are anyway”. This decision does make sense considering it is a Blumhouse production, which are known for creating horror movies, however this decision could ultimately backfire as well. Given that Warner Brothers attempted to create more dark comic book movies and received massive amounts of criticisms towards them, the same dark tone Spawn is said to be could received the same sort of backlash. However, given the more lighthearted Marvel movies audiences have out there and how Spawn will go all the way with an R-rating as well, this could also be a refreshing change of pace with the ever growing comic book movie industry.