Comics
It’s Official: Jamie Foxx is Your New ‘Spawn’
The Jamie Foxx–Spawn love story began five years ago when the star told Movies.com that he was “aggressively pursuing” a role in the Todd McFarlane-directed comic adaptation. “Spawn is one, yeah. And Mike Tyson,” said Foxx. “Those are two roles I would just love to do. I’m aggressively pursuing them.”
Now, with Blumhouse backing the new live-action Spawn, McFarlane has been teasing “big names” to star, even though it’s asserted that the title character/Al Simmons will have a minor role and won’t speak. Today, it’s been confirmed that Foxx will star as the title character, an elite mercenary (Al Simmons) who is killed but comes back from Hell as a reluctant soldier of the Devil.
“The scariest movies, from Jaws to John Carpenter’s The Thing, or The Grudge and The Ring, the boogeyman doesn’t talk,” McFarlane told Deadline, who confirmed the news.
“Spawn” was the first massive launch pad for Image Comics in May of 1992. New Line Cinema would adapt the comic in 1997 with Michael Jai White starring alongside John Leguizamo. A “Spawn” animated series also ran from 1997-1999 totally 18 episodes. It’s about damn time for a revival.
McFarlane previously teased that the new film will be a “dark/hard ‘R’“ and be about the boogeyman.
Deadline says the new incarnation has Foxx playing “Al Simmons”, a member of a CIA black ops team who is betrayed twice. After being set up by his cohorts to be murdered with his corpse set aflame, Simmons is double-crossed in Hell. He is convinced to become a Hellspawn warrior in exchange for being able to be reunited with his wife. But Spawn finds himself stuck in a demonic creature shell, and that his wife moved on and married his best friend. So this is one pissed off antihero who attends to dispatching the scum of the city in good and evil battles that encompass earth, heaven and hell.
There are plans for a trilogy, assuming the first is a hit:
“I’m mentally exhausted from origin stories,” said McFarlane.
He added: “We’ll eventually do some of the background if we make a trilogy, but that’s not this first movie. The first movie is just saying, do you believe? And if you believe than that’s good because I’m hoping to take you for a long ride with this franchise.”
You can read the full interview over at Deadline.
Fan art courtesy of Boss Logic
The supernatural world of Korean folk horror movie Exhuma grows larger with the arrival of prequel spinoff webtoon Maengjong this weekend, Variety reports today.
Naver Webtoon debuts Maengjong on May 30.
The series hails from Haemuri (Olgami) and will trace the high school origins of how shaman duo Hwarim and Bonggil, played by Kim Go-eun and Lee Do-hyun in the 2024 film, came together to face occultish threats.
The story is set to begin when “Hwarim, who has been concealing her identity following a childhood encounter with a snake spirit called Jin, crosses paths with Bonggil at their school.”
Variety notes that Exhuma director Jang Jae-hyun participated in the project’s early concept stage.
“We are presenting ‘Maengjong,’ a new series capturing the appeal of the horror-occult genre, ahead of the full summer season,” said Lee Jeong-geun, Naver Webtoon’s Korea webtoon content leader. “With the high school story of Hwarim and Bonggil, who left a strong impression in the film ‘Exhuma,’ enhanced by Haemuri’s characteristic tense direction, we expect it will be a welcome work for genre fans.”
“It is meaningful that the spin-off story of ‘Exhuma,’ loved by many audiences, expands by meeting the new grammar of webtoon,” said Lee Hyeon-jeong, managing director of the film business division at Showbox, which distributed the film. “We hope it will be a fresh experience for both film fans and webtoon readers.”
Exhuma was a breakout hit in 2024, becoming the first Korean occult film to surpass 10 million ticket buyers and the country’s highest-grossing film of the year. I wrote in my review that “the intricately woven Exhuma delivers one of the year’s biggest surprises in horror so far.”
The bond between Hwarim and Bonggil was one of the film’s highlights, making this prequel webtoon a must for fans.
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