Comics
Todd McFarlane Wants ‘Spawn’ to Be So Dark That It Makes Children Cry!
I love the universe’s timing. This past weekend, Columbia Pictures’ Spider-Man spinoff Venom broke box office records with a $205M global opening. Originally conceived as a horror film that could be R-rated, it ended up a PG-13 action flick. Why this is interesting is that Venom was created by Todd McFarlane, who introduced the character in “The Amazing Spider-Man” #298. After exiting Marvel years later, McFarlane would co-found Image Comics and introduce his “Spawn” into the world.
After a failed live-action adaptation and a way cool HBO animated series, McFarlane has been long developing a reboot to the franchise that is now backed by Blumhouse. After the initial announcement, it was revealed that Oscar winner Jamie Foxx will star as the title character being designed by “The Walking Dead’s” Greg Nicotero. Also starring will be Jeremy Renner.
There’s some cosmic harmony happening here in that Venom just hit theaters and McFarlane is working on something that Venom should have been. IGN caught up with McFarlane at the New York Comic Con and was able to get him to discuss his latest mindset behind Spawn.
“If you think about it as a horror [film] it makes complete sense. If you think about it as Captain America it falls apart,” he explained.
What he’s getting at is that Hollywood can’t see past the “superhero” angle of Spawn.
“Here’s what I’m trying to get Hollywood to understand because they still don’t quite get it – I want to do a dead-serious scary movie that happens to be a superhero, right? And so they keep tripping into this superhero part and I wish I could almost take that piece out of it,” McFarlane added.
Venom comes up in the conversation and is used as an example of backtracking the dangerous aspects of an R-rated movie. In his perspective, a film with a studio’s R-rating isn’t going to be as dark as he thinks it should be.
“There have been a couple of R-rated movies out there. They even teased us a little bit with Venom before they went to PG-13,” he injects. “But they’re not going to go dark in my definition of dark or Jason Blum’s definition of dark or Greg Nicotero’s definition of dark.”
He continued, “Their dark is, ‘here’s PG-13, here’s R,’ they go over a little bit.
“We’re talking that it would make your kids cry. If you’re going to do dark R, make the children cry who are under 10.
“That’s the movie,” McFarlane exclaims. “Do I think that The Joker is gonna make 10-year-olds cry? Nope. Would I make them cry? Sure I would because I’d be doing a movie for adults.”
McFarlane had been using Jaws to justify Spawn being a minor non-speaking character in his adaptation and is now adding New Line Cinema’s The Nun into the mix.
“We just saw one a couple weeks ago called [The] Nun. It’s called Nun. She’s not onscreen the most and she really doesn’t talk a whole heck of a lot, right? I mean, these kinds of movies have been done forever. I’m just saying that in a movie like Jaws, it’s called Jaws but the shark isn’t onscreen talking and whenever the Hollywood studios say, ‘How can you not have the lead character not talk?,’ you and I can stand here and come up with a hundred movies that have done this in the last twenty years. And you don’t even have to go back the last twenty years because there’s one two weeks ago called The Nun and The Nun did it, right?
“So get your Nun hat on. Get your Aliens hat on, get your John Carpenter’s The Thing, get your Jaws hat on. The Grudge, The Ring, get that hat on [and] my script makes sense. You put Captain America, Hulk on? It reads funny.”
McFarlane is saying all the right things. Let’s just hope he can find a distributor who will help him deliver what he wants onto the big screen as hits like The Nun and Venom definitely do help.
What do you want from Spawn?
Comics
‘Curse of the Where Wolf’ Bites Into August Release With Trio of Werewolf Theatrical Screenings [Exclusive Preview]
Larry Chaney‘s hairy misadventures are continuing in the sequel graphic novel Curse of the Where Wolf from creative team Rob Saucedo, Debora Lancianese, and Jack Morelli, and its author is celebrating with a trio of horror’s greatest werewolf films.
The Curse of the Where Wolf hits shelves on August 7 from Encyclopocalypse Publications.
That coincides with the launch of a theatrical screening event in Houston, Texas, featuring a trio of seminal werewolf flicks turning 45 this year: The Howling on August 7, Wolfen on August 14, and An American Werewolf in London on August 21.
Each screening features a “werewolf in film” presentation as well as a book signing from Where Wolf author and River Oaks Theatre artistic director Rob Saucedo.
In the new graphic novel, “Being a werewolf sucks. Reporter Larry Chaney wanted to be a hero. Instead, he became a werewolf. Now, caught between incredible new powers and a desire to eat everything (and everyone) in sight, Larry must find a cure for his curse. Or die trying.”
“With Where Wolf, I wanted to tell a whodunit set in a furry convention, so the story was pretty contained within a very specific setting and genre. With Curse of the Where Wolf, I wanted to celebrate everything I love about the possibility of comic books. Curse of the Where Wolf is a funny book, in every sense of the phrase, but it’s also an earnest look at a person’s struggle to become a better version of themselves, especially when the alternative is to become a literal monster,” Saucedo says of Curse.
The original graphic novel was previously serialized as the first webcomic hosted on Fangoria before being collected by Encyclopocalypse Publications in 2023 and has already been optioned for film, podcast, and television development ahead of launch by producers James Fino (“The Freak Brothers” for Tubi, “Rick and Morty” for Adult Swim) and Charles Horak (First Date for Magnolia Pictures).
Expect Larry to find himself in even weirder situations in the 362-page full color sequel; Saucedo has provided Bloody Disgusting with exclusive art pages from the upcoming graphic novel that showcase lupine humor.
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