Through Venom, A New SPAWN Movie At Last

Now that Venom (2018) proved itself a box-office hit, the path to production for a reboot of the legend known as Spawn might be ready to roll. So says Todd McFarlane, co-creator of Venom (back when Venom was a Spider-Man spin-off), and originator of Spawn and Image Comics, the house that Spawn built. But wait, you might be saying, wasn't there already a Spawn movie back in the year 1997? Yes, yes there was – but that film didn't satisfy the creator. He must be satisfied!

Venom was a success despite less-than-stellar reviews. The film had a budget of $100-million and had a box office gross of $855-million. No sweat! That's a far cry from the comic book films of the 1990s – one of which was indeed Spawn. Spawn (1997) had a budget of around $40-million (after being green-lit with a $20-million budget). This original Spawn film had a cumulative worldwide gross of just under $88-million. We live in a whole new world, now.

Now, here at the tail end of 2018, a brief interview and report from The Hollywood Reporter suggests that Todd McFarlane is closer to the new Spawn launch than ever before. McFarlane, President of Image Comics, sees the future of Spawn as nearly locked-in in this age of anti-hero superhero films aplenty.

"What's the movie," said McFarlane, "whether it's Deadpool or Guardians of the Galaxy or Suicide Squad or The Joker ... Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Daredevil ... which one is it that's failing? None. So that's what I'm trying to tell Hollywood."

"Why is Spawn going into a dark corner that doesn't follow the norms? Why is that one going to be the odd fit that's not going to swim upstream? Of course it will," said McFarlane. |If we keep the budget small, of course it will sell, and now we get to say, 'From the co-creator of Venom' on top of it. Cool."

Spawn is currently in the works with Blumhouse Productions, a company that produced such massive hits as Paranormal Activity, The Purge, Insidious, Sinister, and most recently Jordan Peel's Get Out. Blumhouse generally creates low-budget horror films that turn into massive box-office hits. Spawn will likely see production begin in the year 2019.

Jeremy Renner (who also starred in Venom) is attached to Spawn as Twitch, the "good cop" best buddy of Spawn in Spawn comics and co-star of the comic Sam and Twitch. Spawn will be played by no less than Jamie Foxx.