Todd McFarlane’s Spawn is closer to getting made than it’s ever been before. The project’s been in development for years, with McFarlane conceiving an exciting new take on the hellish antihero, securing Jamie Foxx and Jeremy Renner for lead roles and there being a swathe of talented creatives behind the lens. But with studios apparently nervous about giving him the director’s chair, progress has been slow. Fortunately, Joker‘s success has left producers hungry for dark, R-rated comic book fare, giving Spawn a big boost and apparently ensuring it will begin shooting this year.
But in a recent interview, McFarlane indicated that yet another spanner might have been thrown into the works when he said that the film had lost an “Academy Award-winning guy,” stating:
“Last week I got some discouraging news, we had an Academy Award-winning guy who was going to do the movie with us, but he fell off. We had people willing to fund the movie as long as we had this guy attached but schedules were conflicting, and things had to change. That’s how close we are to getting this thing off the ground.”
Now, Jamie Foxx won Best Actor for Ray in 2005 (he was also nominated the same year for Collateral), so many assumed that this referred to him. And let’s face it, after so many years of being connected to Spawn, it’s understandable he might have concluded that the movie just wasn’t going to happen. Plus, it would make sense for his involvement to be tied in with the film’s funding.
Fortunately, though, it’s now being reported that the person departing the movie is an Academy Award-winning writer rather than actor, and that McFarlane has already lined up a similarly garlanded replacement for him. And, as we all know, screenwriters are essentially interchangeable cogs in Hollywood.
As always, I’ll be lighting a candle for Spawn and hoping that McFarlane isn’t just being bullish when he says: “I’m telling you it will happen this year. This year. And I will direct it. I will be directing it.”