Spawn Reboot Director Might "Walk Away" As Movie Stalls Over Script Issues

It's nearly a year since Jamie Foxx and Jeremy Renner were announced as the stars of the Spawn movie reboot, and there have been very few updates about the project since. Now Todd McFarlane, who created the demonic anti-hero for a series of hugely popular comic books in the 1990s and is set to write and direct the movie, has spoken about the delays to the film.

In an interview with comicbook.com, McFarlane revealed that little has happened in the past year and script agreement between the film's financiers was proving to be an issue. "[We're in] about the same spot," he said. "The money's sitting on the sidelines ready to go. I just need to get everyone that wants to put in money to shake their heads to the same script.

"As you can imagine, everyone has a slightly different version of it in their head. You just go and trying to appease a handful of people while not giving in to what it is that I'm trying to do myself. Because if I have to change it too much, I'll just walk away from it all."

McFarlane's Spawn movie has been in the works for several years. In 2017 it was reported that the film would be produced by horror specialists Blumhouse Films, and that the budget would only be around $10 million, in order for McFarlane to make the film he wants. Foxx was announced in the lead role in May last year, while Renner joined as Detective "Twitch" Williams in July.

While McFarlane has not been specific about the current script issues, it doesn't exactly sound like he wants to make a crowd-pleasing comic book adventure. In an interview earlier this year, McFarlane explained that the movie would contain "no joy." He added: "There's gonna be no fun lines in it, and it's just gonna be this dark, ugly two hours' worth of movie, which is essentially what a lot of supernatural/horror movies are anyway."

The Spawn comic book was first published in 1992 and was massively popular, with the first issue selling 1.7 million copies. However, the 1997 film adaptation received a negative critical reception and underperformed commercially.