Creator Todd McFarlane revealed to ComicBook.com that he’s brought on “The Walking Dead’s” Greg Nicotero and his KNB EFX Group to provide the visual effects for the upcoming film.
McFarlane, who created the iconic Image Comics character, will write and direct the new live-action movie with Jamie Foxx set to star in the titular role. The creator has worked with Nicotero on several projects over the years, including the first Spawn movie back in 1997.
The site explains that, with a smaller budget to work with, McFarlane is focusing on practical effects, rather than heavy CGI, which is what led him back to Nicotero and KNB.
“When I conceived of the story to start with, I never really thought of it as big special effects extravaganza because I knew we weren’t going to have the budget for it,” McFarlane explained. “So I knew I was going to rely heavily on practical makeup and costuming, and one of the places that kept popping up was my good pal Greg Nicotero on his KNB Group. And he’s obviously done a tremendous amount of work on dozens and dozens of movies. The sort of serendipitous part of it is that Greg was there at the beginning 20 years ago for the original Spawn movie.”
In addition to providing the film’s effects, Nicotero has been working with McFarlane on the new Spawn design.
Said McFarlane: “I sat down with Greg and his staff, I just said, ‘Here’s what I see visually.’ I gave them some reference at some images throughout the 25-year history of Spawn that I thought was close to what I was talking about. And then I just stepped back and let them start taking a whack at it.
“Each time they sent me something, I would then draw over it and go, ‘Hey. How about a little bit of this, a little bit of that?’ And then I thought very quickly we actually got to our look of what it is that we want to go at. KNB came out of the gate, showed me a wide, wide range of looks. I was able to narrow it down.”
“We spent about six weeks coming up with some concept art, and designing the character, and a lot of it was kind of getting to the roots of what he’s about,” added Nicotero. “He’s this sort of part feral animal, driven completely by this rage that he has, and he really embraced the idea of getting the sense of how much we want to see of this character, and what we want the audience to see.”
Interestingly, the site notes that there is no actual start date for filming and that McFarlane and producers at Blumhouse are shopping the film to distributors. Watch this spot for any updates as they continue to build this comic adaptation for the big screen.
