New Spawn film.

[Dyne]

didn't really care for the first movie. loved the comics. well the first 25 that i still have anyway. still sounds to me the original idea of never really showing Spawn and having it be a story told from the pov of two detectives still seems to be dancing in his head

http://comics.ign.com/articles/660/660472p1.html

"So, the idea I'm working on with the [new] Spawn movies is not one that would sell toys, and I'm a guy who makes toys. It may be a stupid [move]. You may ask why, but it's because I'm trying to come up with the coolest movie. At the end of that idea, if it doesn't have any toy potential, that's okay. That's okay. I don't know that there was a bunch of Jaws toys when that movie came out. It was just a cool movie. Movies should be movies and then if you can make t-shirts and mugs later -- don't worry about it. I don't know if they made a lot of toys of Sleepless in Seattle, but people still went to it. It was a movie, people enjoyed the movie. Fine. Done. Next. Don't worry about the ancillary, that shouldn't be the driving force. And luckily with DVD sales increasing, they've gotten away from that in Hollywood, where they have to tie it into licensing products. They don't have that need anymore.

IGN Comics: Where do you stand with the next Spawn movie? Where is it in terms of production and what have you taken from the experience of the first movie to make this one a lot better?

McFarlane: Well, "a lot better," I leave that in the eye of the beholder. Spawn has always been something in my mind that, even though I started it as a superhero comic book, it was always like way more than that. There was always a lot more spiritual and again with some of the religious overtones in there and the ghostly aspects, and I like dark and gritty horror stuff too. To me it's like, there's plenty of superhero stuff. No one's going to give me a $70 million budget to do Spider-Man anyway, so forget it. Don't even go there. So how can I get it into a realm that makes sense to me, especially as I get older. The answer is to ground it, as weird as it is, eliminate the fantastic as much as possible, which may seem like an odd thing. And when I say that, it means that Spawn becomes the only fantastic element in the story.

This is where people sometimes misinterpret what I say, 'cause I've talked about the movie before, where's they're like, "There's not gonna be any Violent, not gonna be any Clown in it?" No, there's not. But the movies I grew up with when I was a kid, there was Frankenstein and that was it. There was King Kong and that was it. There wasn't Doctor Doom, there wasn't Magneto, there wasn't sidekicks, there wasn't any of that. There were humans, that were the villagers trying to kill Frankenstein, and then there was the mad scientist -- who was a human -- and his crazy sidekick Igor, but he was human too. The only thing that was fantastic was the monstrosity in the middle. Jaws scared the s--- out of me. It's sort of a fantastic idea of a giant man-eating shark, but everything else was grounded in that movie. It wasn't like, "Okay, now we're gonna bring in the special task force of the government that has these special bazookas." There wasn't any of that.

For me, that's the only way I'm gonna get Spawn made at a reasonable price and still make it interesting. The brand name's been there, I believe that the character's been around long enough now that the majority of the fans are old anyways. And I'm saying old in that they can get into an r-rated movie, if need be, without anybody holding their hand. And as they've gotten older, they've been teased a little bit with the HBO animation and they see we can do something that's a little bit mature, and a little grittier and a little more sophisticated and that that's okay. We'll leave the fun fantasy stuff for those that are fans of Spider-Man. I'm not trying to compete with Spider-Man. I'm trying to create my own path someplace.

The though is that, the movie was called "Jaws" and the movie was about Jaws, but I don't know that we'd say the star of the movie was the shark per se. What made the movie interesting was the sheriff and the biologist and the boat man chasing after the monster. For me, again, it's the villagers trying to hunt down Frankenstein and the mad scientist seeing if he can create something -- all of that is why you care about the monster when he's created. To me, that's the mindset of [the new] Spawn. To me, the true star of the movie, is going to be, the way I have it now, is this character called Twitch. It's about Twitch, who becomes Sheriff Brody. He's that guy. And it's about him and a matter of, again, do you believe in ghosts?

The Exorcist wasn't really about the demon per se. It was about the people around the demon that were involved in the fallout in what it means to have a demon possessing a little girl. For me, that's what makes that movie interesting. Once you make the leap that you're going to accept the fantastic of the demon possession, everything else around it is still grounded. The fallout of those people is what keeps us riveted, instead of following a demon. Because we don't have much in common with demons.

IGN Comics: Do you have a targeted date for it. Are you thinking 2007 or is it too early to say?

McFarlane: In a perfect world, I'd like to put it out next year. I'm in the middle of writing it now. It depends how many times I go over the script. I might be quite pleased with it and get some notes from people I trust, but my guess is I'm probably gonna grind this thing over three or four or five times. I'd love to do production in the first half of the year and that means I could get it out in time Halloween of next year. It shouldn't be a long shoot. It's not an overly complicated story. It's fairly contained. Why? I don't have a big budget. I've got to keep the story consistent with the budget. I think we could shoot this thing in two months.

IGN Comics: Given with what is happening with the comic and what you want to do with the movie, what can we expect with the new animated series?

McFarlane: We wrote it as sort of an 80-minute movie. A long pilot, if you will. It's not episodic, which is sort of a good or bad thing, it depends on how you break stuff down. Again, we're gonna go into Hollywood and try and sell it. If they all say no, boom, we have this direct-to-DVD animated movie, boom, ready to go. What we're planning to do as soon as we get a couple minutes of animation, is actually go back into Hollywood and go back to some of the people that have shown some interest and see if someone wants to put it back on the air. Then we decide if the first show is just a long pilot or if we have to break it up. But thereafter, I'd assume we would go episodic. You tell different stories if you have to end it at the half hour mark as opposed to if you have three hours non-stop.

What you're going to see in this one is a little bit closer to what I just described of what I'm trying to go for in the movie. It's the bridge between the comic book and what I plan on doing in the movie. It's somewhere in between there. It's got some cool stuff, but Spawn is still the only fantastic element in this story. You put a real scenario in and you go, "What if?" What if Spawn was in the middle of Godfather? What if he was in the middle of L.A. Confidential? What if he was in the middle of Saving Private Ryan? How do the dynamics of everything change if you put a ghost in the middle of all of it?

That's sort of what that story is going to be about. And hopefully, from the learning curve, it looks cooler than anything we put out there in the three years of what we did with HBO."

[YellerDog]

I thought that this was already in the works for some reason. They bring it up every couple years or so.

Can't they just do a story with Spawn kicking ass with unlimited powers? The comics never really went there. It was all brooding around for something like 30 issues. Dropped it after that.

I assume the brooding continued.

[Revoltor]

The first movie was good enough. Of course that didn't stop everyone from bitching about the cape.

[Rumpy]

I liked the part where he used his chains to shred Clowns demon head off. That was cool.

[avatar]

MAn this has got a seruous hard-on for Jaws.

Jaws wasn't that great buddy.

Anyway SPawn should be cool. The first one was.

[Rumpy]

Jaws is a terrific movie. Even more so when it came out. Only thing holding it back is the shitty looking shark.

[voltz]

When Todd first aired spawn, there was this feel like everything about spawn's universe was gonna lead up to something big, like a total war with hell and armageddon. I have yet to see any of that, but if this film uses spawn alone and sidesteps everthing else, I don't see how this will be a good movie.

[Dyne]

The first movie was good enough. Of course that didn't stop everyone from bitching about the cape.

because it looks absolutely horrible.

[Glass Joe]

The HBO animated show was better than anything they will come up with for a live action flick, just go watch that. I am quite interested in the new animated show.

[Jetman]

The HBO animated show was better than anything they will come up with for a live action flick, just go watch that.

Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. It wont get any better than that.

I dislike the ideas for the new Spawn movie/cartoon of 'Cop movie' btw Spawn shows up for a bit. I guess McFarlane doesnt think very highly of his creation seeing as he doesnt want any of his new work to focus on it.