Todd McFarlane Teases New Design For SPAWN In Upcoming Film

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As Todd McFarlane gets ready to direct the Spawn reboot, the creator and soon-to-be director teased an interesting element to the new film- a new design.

In a recent interview with Comicbook.com, McFarlane explained:

“Does Spawn have a dark mask and his body dark and then does he have a cape in the comic books? Yes, yes, yes. Will he have all of that in the movie? Yes, yes, yes. So it’s not like I’m going to give him wings instead of a cape and I’m not going to give him no mask instead of a mask. There’s not going to be any of that. It just won’t be exactly what a hardcore fan is used to.

But I’m hoping that people who just go and are familiar with Spawn will say, ‘Yeah, it’s in the box.’ And people who know nothing about Spawn will go, ‘Wow, that’s cool.’ And I have to design for film goers not for comic book fans because the film goers are going to be bigger than the pool of the comic book fans.“

This seems like a risky move to me. On the one hand, I completely get and agree with McFarlane that some amount of adjustment has to be made when adapting comic book material to the big screen. And it’s also a relief that McFarlane isn’t planning on veering too drastically away from how everyone expects Spawn to look either.

On the other hand, Spawn’s design is iconic. Is it the embodiment of 90’s comics and the Rule of Cool? Yes. But it’s engrained into people’s minds. Hell, I’ve never read a single issue of the Spawn comics or watched the original live action film from the 90’s. My personal familiarity of the character comes from heavy metal band Iced Earth’s nominal 1996 concept album The Dark Saga, which is a terrific musical adaptation of Spawn’s lore (Just listen to songs like “I Died For You,” “Slave to the Dark” or especially “A Question of Heaven”). It even features an album cover drawn by McFarlane himself.

For now, I’m going to trust that McFarlane knows what he’s doing here. After all, he designed Spawn to begin with. He’s one of the most qualified people out there to tweak the character’s design for the film environment. Hopefully the design he ends up with will satisfy both newcomers and diehard fans alike.

What do you think? Be sure to share your thoughts in the comments section below!

SOURCE: Comicbook.com