‘Spawn’ movie officially happening, with creator Todd MacFarlane directing

I’ve sort of created a cottage industry of negative stakes that I end up being wrong about here at OL. You could spin it as me being a naysayer, or spin it as me being open to being wrong in the long run. Either way, the idea of Todd MacFarlane directing a new Spawn movie does very, very little for me.

Polygon:

Spawn, Todd MacFarlane’s cult favorite superhero, is heading back to theaters. A new live-action adaptation of the comic series will soon enter production, and its creator will be seated in the director’s chair.

MacFarlane announced during a presentation at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con — hosted at sea on the “IMDB boat,” it must be noted — that he’d found help in bringing his long-gestating Spawn revival to the big screen. Blumhouse, a studio whose past works include The Purge, Get Out and Paranormal Activity, will produce the film.

It’s a good fit for the new Spawn film, which MacFarlane says will be more akin to a horror movie than your average superhero flick. That’s fitting for the anti-hero from Hell and Blumhouse, which specializes in modestly budgeted scary fare.

Spawn, who was known as Al Simmons in his previous life, is a … well, a hellspawn, who is able to return to Earth after death thanks to a deal with an evil creature. With fresh scars and a thirst for revenge, he uses his new supernatural powers to destroy pretty much everyone who gets in his way.

There’s no release date yet for the new Spawn movie, nor has MacFarlane said much else about what the story will involve. All we can ask for is that it clears the very, very low bar set by Spawn’s previous live-action outing: the deservedly panned 1997 film starring Michael Jai White as Spawn, a clown-faced John Leguizamo and Martin Sheen, for some reason.