Every six months or so, it seems like Todd McFarlane (The Amazing Spider-Man, Batman: Year Two) has a promising update on a remake of his 1997 film Spawn, and yet production has never begun. The original film, starring Michael Jai White in what many perceive to be one of the first and most important Black superheroes in cinema, has a divisive history.
Some say Spawn was ahead of its time, predating the gritty, dark superhero trend by nearly a decade, and praise John Leguizamo’s manic, nightmarish performance as Violator. Even Roger Ebert gave it a near-perfect rating, praising it as a surrealistic, hellish art film. Others, including White himself, thought that the film with a 17% Rotten Tomatoes score was a mess; “There is no footage of me ever saying that I liked Spawn. I have never said that I thought that was a good movie,” said White.
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Nonetheless, McFarlane wants to make it right by directing the film itself, and with recent Spawn news, it looks like it’s actually happening. The film will now star Jamie Foxx in the titular role and have Scott Silver (Joker, 8 Mile, The Fighter) and Malcolm Spellman (The Falcoln and the Winter Soldier, Bel-Air) as co-writers. While promoting the entertaining action film As Good as Dead, which he also wrote, White took some time to comment on why Spawn failed, and how it could succeed in a new form.
Michael Jai White on the Good and Bad of Spawn
New Line Cinema
“Well, it’s the darkest superhero there is,” said White, who went on to star in one of the films which ultimately kickstarted the gritty superhero craze, The Dark Knight. In 1997, that darkness wasn’t as popular, but with the continued success of films like Joker and The Batman, things are certainly different. White continued:
If it were done like the comic book, I think would be amazing. I’ve heard Todd McFarlane is supposed to direct it, but I’ve heard this for years. It would be very interesting, because it would have to be a pretty big financial investment, and I don’t know Todd to be a director. So I mean, that’d be history making. I always hear about it, but I’m just like the rest of the fans, waiting to see what happens.
Looking back on the original Spawn film, White’s opinion hasn’t changed much. He hopes that what he disliked about the 1997 film will be addressed and bettered in the remake. “Yeah, maybe certain things were ahead of its time, but I find a fault with the storytelling, and I felt that there was a little bit too much special effects,” explained White. “I saw two versions. I saw an earlier version where the story was more intact, showing the relationship between my Al Simmons character and his wife, and the desire for why Al would want to come back.” Unfortunately, the version that White liked was edited pretty differently in post-production. He elaborated:
Hopefully, this dark tale of revenge, love, and sin will eventually get the cinematic adaptation that not only does justice to the original comics, but that gets White’s vote of approval, too. As Good as Dead premieres December 16.
Later, all that that front story got eliminated. I think the people who had already followed Spawn, they understood the character, and I think they followed along a lot more than most people did. And so I look at this way — I always love just good, basic storytelling. So I feel like the storytelling kind of got a little discombobulated, and things that were not written in the movie went into the second version of the movie. I didn’t know what was going on.
