Comics
Todd McFarlane Wrote ‘Spawn’ with Leonardo Dicaprio in Mind; Spawn Won’t Talk?!
Now that Todd McFarlane is teaming with Blumhouse to try and get his new vision for Spawn behind cameras, the legendary comic book artist has been talking to a variety of press at the San Diego Comic-Con about the long-gestured project.
The biggest reveal is that Al Simmons (Spawn) isn’t the main character. McFarlane talks to Vulture about the script, explaining that the hardest sell is that the Spawn never speaks. “The lead isn’t really Spawn,” explained McFarlane adding that “the Spawn character doesn’t talk.” When execs in Hollywood would question this, he would use Jaws as an example of how it works, teasing Spawn coming out of the darkest and just eating people up. Watch him talk about this below:
Jamie Foxx had allegedly been circling the role of Al Simmons (Spawn) for years but I’m not sure how the actor would feel about a non-speaking role. Still, McFarlane says Academy Award winning talent have been approaching him.
“Yeah, a couple approached me,” McFarlane told Comicbook. “Those are still on the table, and I just recently signed with CAA, the largest and biggest talent agency in Hollywood, so they’ve got lots of talent that they will sort of start pushing and funneling towards it if they think that the roles are there.”
Circling back to his Jaws reference and that Spawn won’t be the main character, it will actually be a police officer:
“There are two big roles in the script,” he added. “There’s obviously sort of Spawn himself, although in a weird way it’s not the biggest role, and then there’s the cop. The cop is this character Twitch who’s been there since issue #1. Twitch is the role in this one, and I sort of refer to him as my Sheriff Brody, who is the sheriff in the Jaws movie. Although it was called Jaws, Jaws didn’t really talk a lot in his movie, right? He just kind of showed up at the opportune time to make the movie worthwhile.”
It might not seem it, but Jaws and Spawn have a great deal in common, at least from a point of view standpoint.
“It was Sheriff Brody, the humans talking, chasing the fantastical thing that sort of made the movie, and to me, there’s that element,” said McFarlane. “Everything else is normal in this story other than (gesture) the shadow moves, and at times even when it moves, the cop just sort of thinks he’s losing his mind so he doesn’t even trust that the shadow’s moving. If you’re a bad guy, then this thing is going to come and it’s going to get you.”
Okay, so who would play this Sheriff Brody character? McFarlane told Vulture he was inspired by Leonardo Dicaprio’s performance in Wolf of Wall Street. “When I was writing I had Leonardo in my head,” pointing to the character’s lunacy as a draw. “There is a manic-ness in him.”
In Spawn, created by McFarlane for his Image imprint back in 1992, an elite mercenary is killed and comes back from Hell as a reluctant soldier of the Devil.
Comics
‘You’ll Never Leave This Place Alive’ – IDW Dark’s Next Horror Comic Will Make You Question Reality
Five friends. Four houses. One perfect life. Bloody Disgusting is excited to exclusively announce You’ll Never Leave This Place Alive, a brand new horror comic from IDW Dark.
From Eisner-Nominated writers Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly, and rising horror artist Heather Vaughan, You’ll Never Leave This Place Alive is described as a “paranoia-laced, socially-conscious, horror mystery that will leave you questioning reality, and reveal that this crafted world is more of a nightmare than the idealistic dream they were expecting.”
Phoebe Joplin has never questioned the world her parents built: a secluded community where she and her friends were raised to be smarter, stronger, and better than anyone else. No distractions. No dangers. No secrets. Until the night of their graduation.
When one of them dies under impossible circumstances, Phee starts to pull at the edges of her perfect life—and what she finds is something far more terrifying than she ever imagined.
Because this place isn’t a sanctuary. It’s a cage. And no one who discovers the truth ever leaves it alive.
Collin Kelly & Jackson Lanzing (Batman – One Bad Day: Clayface, Star Trek: The Last Starship) co-write the upcoming IDW Dark horror comic, featuring art by Heather Vaughan.
Jackson Lanzing said in a statement to Bloody Disgusting, “You’ll Never Leave This Place Alive is in many ways a spiritual successor to our last creator-owned horror, The Principles of Necromancy – a dive into the promise and consequence of playing god with the blood of innocents. But the Hivemind book this reminds me of most is Clayface: One Bad Day. This is a deeply human story with intensely raw emotions – five best friends and their five mysterious parents, tearing one another apart for the promise of some impossible glory that’s waiting just beyond their darkest actions. We’re thrilled to be bringing this story to life with our long-time partner in crime, editor Heather Antos, at IDW Dark – and we’re particularly excited to give our Clayface fans a new, brutal and emotional horror made just for them.”
Adds Collin Kelly, “We’re deconstructing a feeling that seems universal these days; our elders have a death grip on their power, without any intention of giving it up to the generations that come next. YNLTPA is about growing up with the limitless potential of the future… and realizing how much it’s a lie we’ve been fed to keep us under the yoke of the past. Bringing this brutal experience to life is our artist and co-creator, Heather Vaughan, who brings an incredible amount of humanity to our cast. But it’s in our youthful leads that Heather’s art really shines – you are going to fall in love with these young people, even as they go through the worst experience of their lives. What we’ve all crafted together is going to be tragic, painful, but above all else, sincere – with a future so uncertain, there’s only one thing we can trust: you’ll never leave this place alive.”
“Some horror stories are about monsters in the dark. YNLTPA is about realizing the monsters raised you,” previews Senior Group Editor Heather Antos. “Working with Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly on this series has been a dream in the darkest possible way. They’ve built a story that’s layered, brutal, and deeply emotional, and every issue gives artist Heather Vaughan opportunities to push the art into places that feel both haunting and deeply personal. Some horror comics will keep you up at night…this is one that will stick with you for years to come.”
The first issue of You’ll Never Leave This Place Alive goes on sale October 14, 2026! Make sure to pre-order at your local comic shop by September to guarantee a copy.
Exclusively check out the various covers for Issue #1 down below.
IDW Publishing’s horror imprint IDW DARK features comics like A Quiet Place: Storm Warning, Smile: For the Camera, The Exorcism at 1600 Penn, Beneath The Trees Where Nobody Sees, The Twilight Zone, Event Horizon: Dark Descent & Event Horizon: Inferno, and more.
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