Jeremy Renner joins Todd McFarlane’s Spawn

Todd McFarlane has been busy working on a new Spawn movie for years. It has been picked up by Blumhouse and McFarlane is going to direct it.

Jamie Foxx is onboard to play Spawn but that character is going to be more like a mysterious force in the film. McFarlane said, “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.”

Jeremy Renner (Wind River, The Avengers) is reportedly on board to play the role of Detective “Twitch” Williams, who will be at the centre of the Spawn movie story. The character has the intelligence and intuition that Spawn needs most. This unconventional detective is near fearless and compliments Spawn’s demonic powers, and it is that combination that will help Spawn win his war.

SPAWN sold an unprecedented 1.7 million copies at the time it was released and is one of the world’s bestselling and longest-running monthly comic books, with hundreds of millions sold worldwide in more than 120 countries and in 15 different languages.

The comic became an Emmy Award-winning animated series on HBO and a New Line Cinema feature film that grossed more than $100 million. McFarlane went on to direct and produce award-winning and critically acclaimed projects for top movie studios and record labels.

“With the ensemble of award-winning talent that has signed on to the Spawn Movie—Jason Blum (producer), Blumhouse Productions, Jamie Foxx (Spawn), and NOW Jeremy Renner—it is MORE than I’d EVER hoped for when first visualizing this movie years ago,” said Todd McFarlane. “As a first-time feature film director, I’m humbled by the level of talented people putting their trust into my film project.”

While Renner doesn’t really physically match the character from the comics he is a good enough actor to play the role. I am really curious to see how this film develops. Could be something special or could end up being a total mess. I am not sure which it will be yet.

Twitch

“As a first time director, I wanted to surround myself with the most talent and the most skilled people I can on all fronts,” McFarlane told Deadline. “I was lucky enough to land Jason Blum and then Jamie Foxx, and I knew the person on screen the most is this police officer, Twitch Williams. We needed as strong a person as possible because he will be the face of the film. I took my naïve Hollywood approach again, and said let’s start at the top and work down. Jeremy was at the top. I’m a huge fan of his. The character doesn’t need to be a bodybuilder or GQ handsome. I was looking for somebody who’s a person you’ve met before; I needed someone who can pull off the grief of an average human being. I’ve seen Jeremy do that in more than a few of his movies. He was at the top of my list, just like Jamie.”

“Spawn is King Arthur and Twitch is Sir Lancelot, and this isn’t about physicality, or jumping over buildings,” he said. “This is more a brawn and brain combination, and the first film I think of with him is The Hurt Locker, the army grunt doing the job, and that spilled out into all these roles leading up to Wind River. There was a sense of melancholy to that character that is important and that was a movie also made by a first time director, but one who wrote the thing and so wasn’t nervous about trying to get what you want. Jeremy had the experience of working with the first timer and saw that if you put a good crew together, the whole is way better than the parts and you don’t have to worry.”

The next step will be to lock a distributor to set the financing on a film that will likely carry a $10 million-$12 million budget, an R rating, and franchise potential.