Image Comics – 2018(LOS ANGELES) — Image Comics has announced that Oscar-winner Jamie Foxx will take on the title role in a reboot of the hit 1997 movie Spawn, based on the comic book series of the same name.
Like the comic book, the film follows an ex-Marine named Al Simmons who dies, goes to Hell, and sells his soul so he can see his wife again. Unfortunately, when he returns to Earth, he learns his wife has moved on. He then becomes Spawn, and uses his supernatural powers to lay waste to his city’s criminals.
Michael Jai White played the role in the original film.
Todd McFarlane, who created Spawn in the ’90s, wrote and will direct the R-rated reboot. His comic creation sold an unprecedented 1.7 million copies at the time it was released, and remains one of the world’s best-selling and longest-running monthly comics.
“There are five or six moments where I’m going to need things from my actors, and a couple of them have to come from Jamie, and I’ve seen him deliver them onscreen,” said McFarlane in a statement.
“He gets into a zone, with body language and a look that basically will say way more than anything I could type on a piece of paper,” McFarlane added. “And in the odd moment where he has to deliver a line that’s short, curt, and has impact, he can do it in a way that makes you go, ‘Whoa, I don’t want to mess with that guy. What a bada**.’”
Back in 2015, McFarlane told ABC Radio he was willing to fund the movie with his own money. “Mel Gibson did it with Passion of the Christ,” he said of Gibson’s biblical blockbuster, “So this is just my Passion of the Anti-Christ, if you will.”
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