Spawn Movie Reboot Confirmed to Take Place in New York

Spawn creator Todd McFarlane has confirmed the long-awaited movie reboot will take place in New York. Its been 20 years since the last Spawn movie, which starred Michael Jai White as Al Simmons, a CIA assassin who is murdered and reborn as a Hellspawn. While the film featured some impressive make-up effects and production design, it suffered from a poor script and hammy overacting. The film proved to be a modest hit, but not enough to convince the studio to press ahead with a sequel.

For the last decade Todd McFarlane has been talking up his plans to write and direct a Spawn reboot, which would be gritty, low budget and very R-rated. Years went by without any visible progress being made on this film until it was suddenly announced in 2017 that McFarlane was teaming with Blumhouse Productions – best known for horror hits like The Purge and Split – to produce the new Spawn.

The film is due to start production in February 2018, and now McFarlane has confirmed in an interview with Comic Book the movie will take place in New York City. That said, the low budget production can’t afford to shoot the whole film there, so the director is currently exploring his options:

You know what, you know this is sort of the sort of uninteresting part of making movies maybe to people, I don’t know, but there are different places that give incentives for you to come and shoot the movies there. So, we’re going to be looking at all those given that, you know, we’re not going to have a big budget so we’re going to want to stretch it as far as we can, right. And so, but, at the same time given that this world takes place in New York, we’re going to have to be in a place that can be somewhat convincing at times, especially for some exterior shots, though my guess I’ll probably have to do a couple pick up shots actually here in New York City, but you know so you’re looking at places like Detroit, and Cleveland and, I’m Canadian, Toronto.

McFarlane is also aiming to maximise every penny of his modest budget:

So, we’re going to evaluate all that so cause, again, if you save $100,000 here, $200,000 here, half a million dollars here it may allow you to do another trick or go get another actor or something. You’re basically just moving the financial pieces around to get the most bang for your buck and we’re going to do all that.”

After years of talk it’s nice to finally see progress being made on the new Spawn. One of the many issues with the previous movie is that it went for a PG-13 rating when the comic is fundamentally R-rated and dark. It seems there’s now an appetite for more adult comic book movies, shown by the recent success of Logan. Tom Hardy’s upcoming Venom movie is also said to envoke the body horror movies of John Carpenter and David Cronenberg.

2017 has also being a banner year for horror at the box-office thanks to movies like Get Out and IT, and it feels like McFarlane’s is in very safe hands with Blumhouse. Spawn‘s low budget also suggests it will be a very different type of superhero movie, which will focus more on psychological chills than setpieces.