That long-gestating Spawn reboot is finally happening, and it’s found its lead: Jamie Foxx. Foxx will star as Al Simmons, a CIA black ops member who dies and ends up in Hell, only to be sent back to earth as a demonic warrior. Spawn comic creator Todd McFarlane is helming the film.
If you were one of the people hoping for that Spawn remake, you’re in luck: the film is starting to pick up speed. Spawn creator Todd McFarlane has been teasing a reboot of Spawn for years, teaming up with producer Jason Blum‘s Blumhouse to get the project off the ground.
Now, Deadline reports Jamie Foxx has joined the cast. Foxx will play lead character Al Simmons, who gets betrayed, killed, sent to Hell, and resurrected as a Hellspawn. The original plan was for Simmons to serve Hell, but he turns the tables and becomes an anti-hero. The character was created by McFarlane in the ’90s, and was featured in a terrible 1997 movie that has some of the worst special effects you’ll ever see.
Since then, McFarlane has hoped to get a reboot made. Rather than tell another superhero origin story, McFarlane wants the new Spawn to be more like a horror film. In the past, McFarlane has compared the project to Steven Spielberg’s Jaws – a comparison he reiterated to Deadline, while also referencing A Quiet Place:
“The scariest movies, from Jaws to John Carpenter’s The Thing, or The Grudge and The Ring, the boogeyman doesn’t talk…It confuses people because of the comic book industry, and because they all default into their Captain America mindset and I keep saying, no, get into John Carpenter’s mindset or Hitchcock. This is not a man in a rubber suit, it’s not a hero that’s going to come and save the damsel. It’s none of that. At the end of the movie, I’m hoping that the audience will say either, is this a ghost that turns into a man, or is it a man that turns into a ghost? I’ve got a trilogy in mind here, and I’m not inclined in this first movie to do an origin story. I’m mentally exhausted from origin stories. Luckily, there’s a movie that just came out that helps my cause. In A Quiet Place, the first thing on screen is a card in black and white letters that says Day 89. It doesn’t care about what happened in those first 88 days. There are a couple headlines, but then we are on day 450. That movie doesn’t worry about explaining and giving all the answers. What it said in that case was, if you can hang on for a story of survival of this family, this movie will make complete sense for you.”
Foxx’s casting is a step in the right direction. He’s a good actor, and brings a certain level of star power to the project. “We are thrilled Jamie Foxx will be playing the title role in our movie adaptation of Spawn,” producer Jason Blum said. “He is an incredible actor and a huge fan of the Spawn Universe that Todd McFarlane created. With the depth of talent Jamie can commit to the role and Todd at the helm bringing the world of Spawn to life, we could not be more excited for this film.”
While Spawn seems like a character firmly rooted in the ’90s, when xtreme comic book antiheroes reigned supreme, McFarlane’s strange-sounding, stripped-down approach to this new film is interesting. At the very least, it’ll be different than your average superhero movie. In his statement to Deadline, McFarlane compares this new Spawn movie to the trippy, disturbing 1990 horror movie Jacob’s Ladder. If McFarlane is really able to capture the tone of that film for his new Spawn, I’ll be excited to see it.
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