Todd McFarlane Demands His ‘Spawn’ Reboot Be Rated R
Spawn creator Todd McFarlane has only two requests for his upcoming live-action reboot starring Jeremy Renner and Jamie Foxx. First, the movie must have an R-rating. Second, McFarlane has to be the director. Says McFarlane in an interview with Shoryuken:
I have very few demands for the movie. It has to be rated R, there’s no debate around that. With the story I want to tell, my intent goes back to that Spawn Cloud. I am less concerned about what happens in the movie as long as 'Spawn' is ‘cool’ and ‘badass.’ The last demand is that I am the director. That’s it. Everything else is up for conversation.
McFarlane’s demand for an R-rated superhero movie is valid. After all, you can only go so far with “badass” in a PG-13 movie, where things are restricted to mild violence and only one or two “F-bombs.” In terms of directing, McFarlane may be ruled out by producers due to his lack of experience. But it seems for McFarlane like this is a non-negotiable issue. The original 1997 big screen adaptation of Spawn, directed by Mark A.Z. Dippé, was rated PG-13. While those two conditions might be the only must-haves from McFarlane, he’s also prioritizing substantial funds for Spawn. He claimed he can’t just do a “cardboard version” of the movie, and that Hollywood understands “the value of what Spawn can bring to a reasonable budget.”
This adaptation has been in the works for years now, but McFarlane thinks the movie will be made sooner rather than later. He sources another movie from last year as the catalyst for his kind of Spawn adaptation — Todd Phillips’ Joker, which is also R-rated. "Joker lit the fire, up until now it felt like I was pushing up this bolder on my own," said McFarlane. "But now there are others joining me who know that these stories should be told."
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