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‘Spawn’ Movie to draw Inspiration from ‘JAWS’

You read that right! The upcoming and in development movie for the famous Marvel icon will draw its inspiration from Stephen Speilberg’s JAWS.

At SDCC this past weekend, fans of the comic book antihero finally got the news that they have been long awaiting for. The last Spawn movie was released about 20 years ago, so fans have previously stated that the film is long overdue. (20 years ago or not, I still find this film enjoyable!).

In a previous interview Todd McFarlane, who will be directing the reboot, stated that he intends for the film to be rated R:

Listen, I’m going to paint it for you. The movie is going to be a dark R… If here’s PG-13 and here’s Deadpool and here’s Logan, we’re going to be here. It’s going to be dark. It’s going to be nasty.

When Todd McFarlane was announced as both the writer and director of the Spawn movie under Blumhouse Productions, the excitement of Spawn fans everywhere was delightfully contagious. McFarlane teased, however, this may not be the Spawn you recognize.

Slashfilm reported that McFarland would direct the Spawn movie at Comic Con, which Blumhouse CEO Jason Blum confirmed on the McFarlane Toys YouTube channel on Monday:

“I think he’s a great inspired artist, he created Spawn, and he’s the best, really only, person to direct this movie. We’ve been talking about it for quite some time and I believe in him. He’s going to join the ranks of Jordan Peele with Get Out, M. Night and the Visit and Split with us. And I think Todd is going to fit great into the Blumhouse mold, and we’re going to open up a lane for him to do his thing.”

During the Comic-Con circuit, McFarlane could not contain his excitement when it came to describing his vision about the upcoming film… and I mean who could blame him? Directing a Marvel film is certainly something many directors dream of! He also stated that Spawn, the famous antihero of the supernatural horror comics who battles both gangs and demons, would not be the main character of this film.

“The lead isn’t really Spawn,” McFarlane explained to Vulture, saying that “the Spawn character doesn’t talk.”

In another interview with ComicBook.com , McFarlane stated that the Spawn movie would draw inspiration from Steven Spielberg’s 1975 classic JAWS. Now, you may be finding yourself asking… wait a minute, this is a movie about an anti-hero…. how is a shark movie an inspiration for this?

For those of you who have seen JAWS, you know that the gigantic Great White Shark still had a way of instilling that terror, even though he wasn’t necessarily visible for over half of the film. The music and dramatizations were enough to imply his presence. The film may have been named after the legendary shark, but he certainly wasn’t the lead role.

McFarlane plans to have the main character be a cop, while Spawn would be like Jaws. A mysterious and rarely seen figure:

“There’s two big roles in the script. There’s obviously sort of Spawn himself, although in a weird way it’s not the biggest role, and then there’s the cop. The cop is this character Twitch who’s been there since issue #1. Twitch is the role in this one, and I sort of refer to him as my sheriff Brody, who is the sheriff in the Jaws movie. Although it was called Jaws, Jaws didn’t really talk a lot in his movie, right? He just kind of showed up at the opportune time to make the movie worthwhile.”

McFarlane told Vulture that he is eyeing Wolf of Wall Street star Leonardo Dicaprio to take up the role of his “Sheriff Brody” character in Spawn.

“When I was writing I had Leonardo in my head,” McFarlane said. “There is a manic-ness in him.”

No official release date has been announced for the Spawn reboot, but check back with us for more details!