Jamie Foxx is confirmed to star in the latest Spawn film from Blumhouse Productions which will mark the directorial debut of the creator of the original comic, Todd McFarlane (according to Deadline). McFarlane will also write and co-produce with Jason Blum.
McFarlane said that Foxx was the actor in his mind when he wrote the script. “Jamie came to my office five years ago, and he had an idea about Spawn and we talked about it. I never forgot him, and when I was writing this script… he was my visual guy and I never let go of him… Luckily, he hadn’t forgotten either. I said, ‘Hey, I’m back to talk about Spawn again, and he was like, let’s do it.”
As told to Movies.com earlier, Foxx mentioned, “Spawn is one, and Mike Tyson. Those are two roles I would just love to do. I’m aggressively pursuing them.”
He further added “A few years back I flew out to Arizona to meet the man behind one of the most incredible comic book characters in the universe-Todd McFarlane. I told him no one would work harder than me if given the opportunity… to put my name in the hat to embody his beloved character Spawn… well… the opportunity is here!!” (Deadline)
First appeared in print in 1992 by Image Comics, the Spawn character gained instant popularity which made New Line Cinema adapt the character into a feature film in 1997 starring Michael Jai White. HBO also took the antihero in an animated series that lasted for three seasons, with six episodes each and earned two Emmy Awards.
As the comic story-line goes, Spawn is a human-turned-Hellspawn who possesses superhuman strength, speed, and is almost immortal. Spawn also has the ability to teleport, shapeshift, and heal. Foxx will star as the elite mercenary (Al Simmons) who is killed but comes back from Hell as a reluctant soldier of the Devil after being betrayed twice by his comrades to be murdered with his corpse set aflame.
Convinced to become a Hellspawn warrior in exchange for being able to be reunited with his wife, Spawn finds himself stuck in a demonic creature shell and is double-crossed in Hell as well. Later he finds out that his wife has moved on and remarried.
Recently seen in Sony’s Baby Driver, Spawn reboot will be Foxx’s second comic book film, after playing Electro in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. He can be seen next in Robin Hood: Origins as Little John and also in All-Star Weekend which he has directed as well.
McFarlane, who previously teased that the new film will be a “dark/hard R” about the boogeyman. But he doesn’t want to disclose Spawn’s story and wants his anti-hero to be a man of few words. “The scariest movies, from Jaws to John Carpenter’s The Thing, or The Grudge and The Ring, the boogeyman doesn’t talk. It confuses people because of the comic book industry, and because they all default into their Captain America mindset and I keep saying, no, get into John Carpenter’s mindset or Hitchcock. 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?” he told Deadline.
There are plans for a trilogy, assuming the first being successful. “I’ve got a trilogy in mind here, and I’m not inclined in this first movie to do an origin story. I’m mentally exhausted from origin stories,” McFarlane noted.