While a look back at 1997's Spawn might certainly send chills down spines, it won't for the reasons intended by creator of the Image Comics character, Todd McFarlane. The poorly-received superhero flick was incredibly cheesy, especially for a story about a character who has just come back from a stint in hell. Now under Blumhouse Productions with McFarlane as writer and director of the upcoming Spawn reboot, however, the new movie should conjure up some truly entertaining frights. That's especially true now that special effects legend and Walking Dead special effects makeup artist Greg Nicotero and his KNB Group have signed on to work on the antihero film. McFarlane shared his enthusiasm to have Nicotero on the project with him, saying,
When I conceived of the story to start with, I never really thought of it as big special effects extravaganza because I knew we weren't going to have the budget for it. So I knew I was going to rely heavily on practical makeup and costuming, and one of the places that kept popping up was my good pal Greg Nicotero on his KNB Group. And he's obviously done a tremendous amount of work on dozens and dozens of movies. The sort of serendipitous part of it is that Greg was there at the beginning 20 years ago for the original Spawn movie.
With Jamie Foxx as the titular antihero and Jeremy Renner as "Twitch" Williams in the live-action comic book adaptation, Todd McFarlane's announcement to ComicBook adds some more excitement to the film. Greg Nicotero not only worked on the original Spawn film in the '90s, but he has generated quite the name for himself in special effects as he has worked hard on zombie makeup in other comic genre ventures such as The Walking Dead, Fear the Walking Dead, Preacher and Sin City among his long and impressive resume. McFarlane may not have a big budget, but implementing practical effects with the help of a pro like Nicotero and his team seems like a natural decision for the director to make for this project.
Todd McFarlane and Greg Nicotero have been friends since the original Spawn movie and are now collaborating again, over 20 years later. However, McFarlane is not going for the same approach that the filmmakers took when creating the first live-action Spawn film. The team took about six weeks to come up with the concept art, which is going to implement much more horror elements and likely veer toward R-rated material. With plans underway for the visual look of the upcoming Spawn, McFarlane hopes to begin production on the project in early 2019, but the film has yet to get a release date.
