Jason Blum’s ‘Spawn’ Reboot Is Sick of Being a ‘Development Hell’-spawn
With the influx of superhero media on screens big and small these days, many comic book heroes and villains have fallen victim to the machine with an outing that’s done them more than a bit dirty (see Kang the Conqueror in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania; Morbius in the ill-fated, tragically-memed-upon Morbius; and just about everybody in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice).
But even they pale in comparison to poor Spawn, Image Comics’ golden boy whose impressive track record in the comics world is far from the abysmal luck he’s had onscreen. Indeed, the misfortune of his 1997 dumpster fire of a solo film is perhaps only matched by the nearly-decade-long period of development hell suffered by the upcoming reboot feature promised by Spawn creator Todd McFarlane and producer Jason Blum.
Blum made a similar promise earlier this summer in the form of a 2025 release date, and it’s a promise he’s chosen to stick to in spite of the recently-concluded WGA strike, yet-unresolved SAG-AFTRA strike, and star Jamie Foxx’s recent medical debacle, according to a recent interview with ComicBook.com.
2025 is when Spawn is going to come out, I stand by that. I stand by that.
It’s certainly a bold statement, given the hurdles that remain out of Blum’s hands, the pressure of making a movie worthy of such an iconic character, and the shadow of the 1997 film that will no doubt loom over the new film. But, the Blumhouse head is far from lost on the mountain that he and his team need to climb. In fact, it seems that it’s only strengthening the convictions in play.
But, you start bringing on A-list people. And we’re bringing on A-list people. Not just one, but multiple A-list people. And, it’s going to continue to grow… What they’re not going to want is to do a cheap, low-budget movie with all of these big-name people on it. That’s not why they’re signing up. They’re not looking for a big extravaganza. But, they’re also not looking for an $8 million horror movie budget.
In any case, here’s hoping that Blum’s Spawn-centric gumption will pay off; superhero movies are in desperate need of kicking their real and imagined formulaic tendencies, and judging by Blum’s characterization of his Spawn movie as “The Boys [meets]… a traditional horror film,” it sounds like just the boon the subgenre needs, provided it’s actually a good movie, of course.
(featured image: Image Comics)
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