Movies
Todd McFarlane Confirms He Wants a Second ‘Spawn’
Earlier this year, Todd McFarlane announced that he’d completed a massive screenplay for a new Spawn film. Since then, nothing has been heard about the status of the project, which makes sense as McFarlane admitted that he needed to edit his script down around 45 pages to bring it to a still long 140 pages. In filmmaking, the general consensus is that each page in a script should take about one minute of the film, so this suggests a film that is well over two hours, something studios would almost certainly balk at.
In a new interview with AMC’s “Geeking Out”, McFarlane was interviewed about the status of the project, to which he replied that it is going to happen and that he wants something, “…dark, R-rated, scary, badass.” He explains that the world is going to be real with an element of fantasy. He used The Exorcist as an example of this, where everything in the film was real except for this young girl and what was happening with and around her. He also likened it to another horror classic by explaining, “…you’re never going to see a dude in a rubber suit….This is going to be my ‘Jaws’ shark.”
McFarlane talked about this concept back in February with ComicBook.com, saying, “In the background, there’s this thing moving around, this boogeyman. That boogeyman just happens to be something that you and I, intellectually, know is Spawn. Will he look like he did in the first movie? No. Will he have a supervillain he fights? No. He’s going to be the spectre, the ghost.”
Spawn began as a comic book, was converted into an HBO animated series, and then was brought to the silver screen in 1997 with Michael Jai White in the titular role. It wasn’t exactly well received but the soundtrack kicked a lot of ass and John Leguizamo nailed the role of Clown.
Movies
‘Abigail’ on Track for a Better Opening Weekend Than Universal’s Previous Two Vampire Attempts
In the wake of Leigh Whannell’s Invisible Man back in 2020, Universal has been struggling to achieve further box office success with their Universal Monsters brand. Even in the early days of the pandemic, Invisible Man scared up $144 million at the worldwide box office, while last year’s Universal Monsters: Dracula movies The Last Voyage of the Demeter and Renfield didn’t even approach that number when you COMBINE their individual box office hauls.
The horror-comedy Renfield came along first in April 2023, ending its run with just $26 million. The period piece Last Voyage of the Demeter ended its own run with a mere $21 million.
But Universal is trying again with their ballerina vampire movie Abigail this weekend, the latest bloodbath directed by the filmmakers known as Radio Silence (Ready or Not, Scream).
Unlike Demeter and Renfield, the early reviews for Abigail are incredibly strong, with our own Meagan Navarro calling the film “savagely inventive in terms of its vampiric gore,” ultimately “offering a thrill ride with sharp, pointy teeth.” Read her full review here.
That early buzz – coupled with some excellent trailers – should drive Abigail to moderate box office success, the film already scaring up $1 million in Thursday previews last night. Variety notes that Abigail is currently on track to enjoy a $12 million – $15 million opening weekend, which would smash Renfield ($8 million) and Demeter’s ($6 million) opening weekends.
Working to Abigail‘s advantage is the film’s reported $28 million production budget, making it a more affordable box office bet for Universal than the two aforementioned movies.
Stay tuned for more box office reporting in the coming days.
In Abigail, “After a group of would-be criminals kidnap the 12-year-old ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, all they have to do to collect a $50 million ransom is watch the girl overnight. In an isolated mansion, the captors start to dwindle, one by one, and they discover, to their mounting horror, that they’re locked inside with no normal little girl.”
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