Jamie Foxx Confirmed For Todd McFarlane’s Dark Blumhouse Adaptation of ‘Spawn’

Jamie Foxx is set to star in another film adaptation of the 1992 comic under Image Comics, Spawn. Todd McFarlane, the creator of the original comic, will write and direct the film with Blumhouse Productions producing. This will mark his directorial debut and Foxx second time to play a comic book character. In 2014, Foxx played Electro The Amazing Spider-man 2, alongside Andrew Garfield. McFarlane admits that Foxx was in mind when he was writing the script.

McFarlane wants it creepy and scary

Todd McFarlane might have created the character, but he’s talking the film in another direction. He told Deadline that he wouldn’t be telling Spawn’s origin story—at least not in the first installment. “I’m not inclined in this first movie to do an origin story. I’m mentally exhausted from origin stories,” McFarlane says. But he does have a trilogy in mind. “We’ll eventually do some of the background if we make a trilogy, but that’s not this first movie,” he adds.

He also envisions the character as a man of few words, saying some of the scariest characters is some of the scariest movies barely have any lines. Some films he listed are Jaws, The Grudge, and The Ring.

He wants to steer the people’s minds away from the conventional comic book hero. “This is not a man in a rubber suit; it’s not a hero that’s going to come and save the damsel. It’s none of that. At the end of the movie, I’m hoping that the audience will say either, is this a ghost that turns into a man, or is it a man that turns into a ghost?”

From paper to screen

Spawn has seen many lives. In the comics, Al Simmons is a Force Recon Marine and basically rose ranks because of his skills, and then turned CIA. When he started to question the agency’s morality, his friend and partner, Bruce Stinson, was hired to kill him in a massive fire. Simmons’ soul went straight to Hell. Once in Hell, he made a deal with Malebolgia, an evil being. In exchange for his soul, he’ll get to see his wife again. But he returns to the world above five years later as a demonic creature known as Spawn, with almost no clue of his former life. When memories start to trickle back, Spawn sets out on a mission to look for Wanda, his wife. But he was only met with heartbreak when he sees that she’s moved on with his best friend.

The story was brought to the screen for the first time in 1997, and it starred Michael Jai White as the titular character. HBO also took a shot at with an animated TV series, Todd McFarlane’s Spawn, that ran from 1997 to 1999. Keith David lent his voice to the character three times, as there were two sequels to the series, Todd McFarlane’s Spawn 2 and Todd McFarlane’s Spawn 3: The Ultimate Battle.