Comics
Todd McFarlane Says More Things About ‘Spawn’ Because of ‘Joker’s’ Success
Comic book and action figure titan Todd McFarlane continues to talk about his forthcoming live-action adaptation of Spawn, which he insists on writing and directing with a large budget.
The project sits at Blumhouse with Jamie Foxx attached to star as the title character and Jeremy Renner as Detective Twitch. McFarlane has been tweaking the screenplay for years while also recently threatening to crowdsource the new adaptation.
It feels like every few months McFarlane has a new update offering hope and excitement, but he’s becoming the boy who cried wolf. Now, he’s claiming the success of Joker has opened new doors to his R-rated Spawn.
“We keep pushing for it,” he tells the Phoenix New Times. “It’s interesting cause the Marvel movies, the MCU, has been doing quite well and those are PG-13 movies. I keep trying to convince people that doing a dark, serious comic book movie will work. There’s been so much success with these PG-13 movies that there’s a resistance to them in Hollywood. But since Joker came out, it proves what I’ve been saying for over two years to any executives I can talk to. Serious dark comic books can work. R-movies can succeed. So now, all of a sudden, I’ve been getting a lot of phone calls saying, ‘Todd, we need to talk to you about that R-rated dark thing you wanted to do.’ So Joker did me a favor.”
Don’t get me wrong, I’m dying to see Spawn back on the big screen, but I’m still skeptical. While there may be new interest, the same problems exist: there’s a weak script that McFarlane refuses to allow anyone to touch; the budget is too high; McFarlane insists on directing; and the intellectual property is not for sale.
While I’m actually on McFarlane’s side with all of his demands and respect his candor/stubbornness, it’s also what’s keeping this project from coming to fruition. At some point, he’s going to have to play ball. However, all the respect to him if he can stand his ground, have all the cake and eat it too.
IDW Dark and Paramount recently joined forces to launch limited comic book tales set in the worlds of Smile and A Quiet Place, and we’ve learned today that they’ll continue hanging around in those franchise universes with two brand new limited series tales.
Entertainment Weekly has exclusively revealed this afternoon that IDW Dark’s Any Given Smile debuts in September, while A Quiet Place: Rising Tides arrives in November.
First up, from writer Stephanie Williams and artist Pablo Collar, Any Given Smile puts a football-themed twist on Parker Finn’s successful Smile movie franchise.
The five-part limited series is “set in January 1995, during the American Arena League football championship game in St. Augustine, Florida. The rising superstar of the Sharks, backup quarterback Dupree, is feeling the pressure from his teammates, the fans, and also the city’s gambling underworld, to whom he owes a considerable debt. Meanwhile, a sports journalist investigates a string of suicides that may be connected to the big game. At the very least, they are connected to a sinister entity that preys on the minds of its victims.”
From writer Declan Shalvey and artist Luke Sparrow, A Quiet Place: Rising Tides will also be a five-issue limited story. The comic book tale “brings the creatures to the Florida Keys, where a father-daughter duo attempt to survive on water in a houseboat.”
EW further details, “This tense family reunion coincides with the arrival of the vicious creatures that hunt through sound. Grace and her dad find safety on the open ocean, but she’ll have to make landfall sooner or later; the father’s oxygen tank and their supplies are running low, while a hurricane swiftly approaches.”
Learn more about both comic books over on Entertainment Weekly.
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