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.
A contemporary reimagining of H.P. Lovecraft’s short story Herbert West: Reanimator is on the way, and Deadline has unveiled the first look at the new Herbert West and the pathologist drawn to his orbit.
The original screenplay and storyline come from Jade Sandberg Wallis.
Michael Grossman (“The Originals”, “Pretty Little Liars”) directs.
The new images introduce star Joseph Morgan (“Vampire Diaries“), who plays “brilliant surgeon and scientist Herbert West, who is obsessed with creating a serum to reanimate the dead.” Katie Cassidy (Speed Demon) stars opposite as the pathologist with a troubled past who joins his efforts.
Together, they prove that conquering death may be the ultimate sin against life itself.
The film’s official synopsis: “As a child, Herbert West watches his father Peter reanimate his dead mother Judith in a secret basement lab — only for Judith to mortally wound Peter and nearly kill Herbert before Peter shoots her. The trauma leaves its mark on Herbert, but so does one final image: his mother’s finger, twitching after death. Thirty years later, Herbert West is a brilliant, secretive surgeon still chasing his father’s obsession.
“Pathologist Kate Locke arrives in town and is drawn into his orbit — first through a spark at a hospital fundraiser, then through his secret lab, where he reveals a serum capable of reanimating severed tissue. Kate, hiding a dark past of her own, is thrilled rather than horrified, and moves into West’s mansion to work alongside him. Their early experiments on a cadaver succeed only briefly. West concludes that dead tissue is the problem — they need something fresher.”
Supporting cast includes Scott Aiello, Ira J Amyx, Randall Newsome, Emma Reinagal, James D. Bryce, Kathryn A Bentley, Jack Lancaster, Amy Holland Pennell, John Pierson, Mindy Shaw, Eric Dean White, Tristan Wilder Hallet, Adrienne Lamping, Aaron Crippen, and Drew Patterson.
Makeup artist Jeff Lewis (“Star Trek: Voyager,” “Star Trek: Enterprise”) and cousin Roger Lewis are heading the production via their newly established Woodlake Entertainment.
Lovecraft’s short story, first serialized in Home Brew magazine in 1922, is the first among his works to mention the fictional Miskatonic University. It was most famously adapted into a 1985 horror movie from Stuart Gordon, starring Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West.
Herbert West: Reanimator is set in Alton, Illinois, where production is now underway.
Herbert West: Reanimator. Photo credit: Matt Lief Anderson
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