Jeremy Renner Will Star In Spawn Movie Alongside Jamie Foxx

According to Deadline, Jeremy Renner has been cast as Detective "Twitch" Williams in the upcoming Spawn movie. He'll be starring alongside Jamie Foxx, who's portraying the titular character. The film marks the directorial debut of Todd McFarlane, the creator of the original Spawn comic.

Mainstream fans of Marvel or DC Comics might not recognize the name of the superhero Spawn, as he doesn't belong to either universe. Spawn's first issue debuted in May 1992, telling the story of Albert "Al" Simmons, a CIA operative who's killed by his best friend and subsequently sent to hell. There, Al makes a deal with an evil being known as Malebolgia, where Al exchanges his soul for a chance to walk the earth again and be with his wife.

Al is brought back to life, but five years have passed and his wife has moved on, married someone else, and had a daughter. Even worse, Al has little to no memory of his past life other than his wife, and his body has been reduced to a twisted corpse covered by a demonic supernatural cape. An agent of Malebolgia, known as the Violator, checks in with Al to let him know he's been reborn as a Hellspawn (or Spawn for short) and must enact horrific violence on the world in order to spread Malebolgia's evil. Al retreats to a near-abandoned alley in a desperate attempt to hide away from his growing desire to inflict violence on others, vowing to only venture into the world to watch over his ex-wife and her family. However, unable to suppress his rage at his hideous appearance and unfair situation, Spawn dispenses the bloodiest, most visceral punishments he can think of upon the criminals he finds, whether they be human, angel, or demon.

Spawn has very few allies, but Twitch proves to be one of the anti-hero's most valuable. Unafraid of Spawn's demonic appearance and powers, Twitch will sometimes help Spawn on his mission to rid the world of criminals. Twitch's intelligence and intuition make him one of the world's best detectives, and the sheer breadth of his knowledge has helped Spawn on more than one occasion. Twitch is also an incredible marksman, as his ability to solve advanced trigonometric functions on the fly makes him a near perfect shot.

As many people know, this isn't Jeremy Renner's first superhero rodeo, as the actor plays Hawkeye in Marvel's cinematic universe. Renner's fellow star, Jamie Foxx, is also a comic movie veteran, having played Electro in Amazing Spider-Man 2. However, both actors are in for a very different kind of superhero story this time around. Spawn is one of the most graphic comics out there, featuring large amounts of gore, sex, torture or some combination of the three. It comes as little surprise that Todd McFarlane has claimed the movie will be more R-rated than Deadpool. This movie will be dark.

What does come as a surprise is the report that Foxx will have few lines while in costume as Spawn, considering the comics feature numerous instances of Spawn speaking to himself. In another twist, Spawn won't cover Spawn's origin and instead deliver viewers straight into one of the demon's later stories. Though skipping the hero's origin has been done with comic book movies before, rarely is it done with characters with convoluted backstories.