Michael Jai White — who starred as Al Simmons in the 1997 film adaptation of Spawn — has offered his thought on the planned reboot, in which Jamie Foxx is slated to take over the title role, with Spawn creator Todd McFarlane at the helm.
White starred as the title character in the original Spawn movie released in 1997, and he’s a little curious about what McFarlane is planning. The Spawn actor explains he is skeptical of the film’s potential to be made but wishes the comic book creator the best all the same.
“I don’t know anything about it,” the actor told ComicBook.com. “He’s been talking about a reboot of Spawn for 20 years. I think he will continue talking about it, because people listen. I don’t understand it, personally. I wish him the best of luck. But, Todd explained to me that this will be a character that you didn’t see. You never see the character. It’s just a character that’s scarcely on film. Personally, I don’t get it.
White went on to theorize that one of the setbacks could be the fact that McFarlane has never made a movie before, and that might make financiers reluctant to invest in the project.
“I would think a Spawn movie would cost a lot of money, right? And if there’s somebody giving Todd McFarlane, a man who’s never directed a movie that much money, that will be a first in my experience. I’ll believe it when I see it,” White said.
He added, “I wish him the best of luck, but doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.”
On that note, securing funding for his new Spawn movie has proven to be a challenge for McFarlane. Nevertheless, the character’s creator seems bound and determined to make a new live-action film a reality, one way or another. In the world of comics, however, Al Simmons has been making waves as of late, with Image Comics’ Spawn recently making history by becoming the longest-running creator-owned superhero comic book of all time. Whether or not this milestone has swayed potential investors to help fund the movie remains to be seen.
Written and directed by Todd McFarlane, Spawn stars Jamie Foxx and Jeremy Renner. The planned reboot does not yet have a release date.
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