The creator of the pulp comic Spawn speaks at San Diego Comic-Con about what recent events mean for the new adaptation.
The Spawn movie franchise has been plagued with stop/starts for the better part of 15 years. After an HBO animated series adaptation, 1997 brought Todd McFarlane’s Image Comics banner hero to the big screen to a less-than-stellar reaction. It has been a different world ever since and with the major takeover of comic book movies, it has been the ideal time for a reboot, especially with the proven success of a violence-filled R-rated superhero franchise like the Deadpool movies.
With the unfortunate cards dealt recently with Jamie Foxx’s health and now the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, Todd McFarlane recently gave an uncertain update on the status of the Spawn reboot speaking with ScreenRant at the 2023 San Diego Comic-Con — an event usually reserved for the biggest and most exclusive news on big upcoming films, but the strikes have nearly all the studios skipping this year.
McFarlane states, “We’re right in the middle of a strike. Everybody’s saying, ‘Don’t go out and promote,’ and whatever else. Jason Blum gave an interview before the SAG strike. People can go out there and read that, which essentially just says, like any other project, Spawn’s no different than a million other projects. You’re constantly working on stuff, but again, things that are out of everybody’s control come along. Things like the pandemic and people get caught in that. And then, up until recently, a writer strike comes, boom. That goes down, the actor strike, whatever.
But when those inadvertent things aren’t happening, then you’re pushing the boulder a little bit forward so that we can, at some point, go into Hollywood and actually sell it. I’m hearing about stuff that [is] 90 percent completed, and then they’re having to shut it down. We’re so far away from that. We have to sell it at some point. For right now, it’s pens down on the writing, and nothing’s happening on the actor.
I’m just as curious to see how long this all takes to get resolved. But my guess is that once it does get resolved — and fingers crossed should be hopefully sooner than later, but I don’t know if that’s even true — that within 60 days after the resolution, we should then be able to actually go into the city. And actually say, ‘Hey, we’re ready.’ I don’t know. We’ll see. I don’t control any of this. I’m just going along for the ride.”
