News: Jamie Foxx Will Play Spawn



It was reported several weeks ago that the title role in the upcoming Spawn film had been offered to Jamie Foxx. Now, Deadline is reporting that Foxx has officially accepted the role.

Blumhouse Productions and Jason Blum will develop and produce the upcoming Spawn movie, with Todd McFarlane writing the script and making his directorial debut. The film will be a supernatural thriller and Jason Blum has compared the film to Jaws, with Spawn basically taking on the role of the shark. Spawn won’t speak, and the main character will be similar to the role of Chief Brody in Jaws. Blumhouse Productions and Jason Blum will develop and produce the upcoming Spawn movie, with McFarlane making his directorial debut.
  

 Al Simmons was the original character in the comic books, a CIA black ops member whose team betrays and murders him. After being set on fire and being dying, he ends up being double crossed in Hell. He is convinced to become a Hellspawn warrior in exchange for being able to be reunited with his wife. Spawn finds himself stuck in this new form, and sees that his wife has moved on and married his best friend. The end result is one pissed off antihero who dispatches the scum of the city in good and evil battles that encompass Earth, Heaven and Hell.

MacFarlane told Deadline that he will not tell Spawn‘s origin story and that the anti-hero will be a man of few words, saying that:

“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.”

McFarlane continues:

“If you want to see something creepy and powerful where you go, just what the hell was that? I’m not going to explain how Spawn does what he does; he is just going to do it. We’ll eventually do some of the background if we make a trilogy, but that’s not this first movie. The first movie is just saying, do you believe? And if you believe than that’s good because I’m hoping to take you for a long ride with this franchise.”

The question was addressed about why he would need the Oscar-winning actor to play Spawn, with Macfarlane saying: 

“There are five or six moments where I’m going to need things from my actors, and a couple of them have to come from Jamie, and I’ve seen him deliver them onscreen. He gets into a zone, with body language and a look that basically will say way more than anything i could type on a piece of paper, and this movie is going to need those moments. And in the odd moment where he has to deliver a line that’s short, curt and has impact, he can do it in a way that makes you go, ‘Whoa, I don’t want to mess with that guy. What a badass.'”

McFarlane adds that Foxx was the actor he had in mind when penning the script, saying:

“Jamie came to my office five years ago, and he had an idea about Spawn and we talked about it,” McFarlane said. “I never forgot him, and when I was writing this script, you sort of plug people in, and he was my visual guy and I never let go of him. When I got done and my agents and everybody was talking about what actor, I said, I’m going to Jamie first and until he says no I don’t want to think about anyone else because I’ve never had anyone else in my head. Luckily, he hadn’t forgotten either. I said, ‘Hey, I’m back to talk about Spawn again, and he was like, let’s do it.'”