Spawn: Creator Todd McFarlane and Blumhouse Tease New Movie Is King Spawn

Todd McFarlane’s long-awaited Spawn movie will be titled King Spawn, the comic book legend revealed today on social media. The announcement comes in the form of a script cover, which suggests the script is finally finished, and production could start soon. Timed to the week of San Diego Comic Con, it would be surprising if McFarlane, or Blumhouse Productions, or both, didn’t have some announcement coming this week. Last year, Blumhouse chief Jason Blum said that he planned to get the movie in theaters in 2025. If it were to go into production soon, especially on a relatively modest budget and a tight shoot, it’s entirely possible that could still happen.

The story, in which Spawn is pressured to take the throne of Hell after one of the most dangerous beings in history escapes from the underworld, is one of a number of Spawn spinoff titles launched in the wake of McFarlane’s history-making 300th issue of Spawn in 2019.   

“I would say you have a lot to hope for because it’s in very very active development,” Blum said at the time. “What needs to happen is that my fellow friends the writers and the studios need to figure out their differences and get back to writing, but we’ve got a great group of folks putting it together, and my hope is that that movie — my prediction is maybe we’ll actually see a Spawn movie in ’25. No promises, but that’s my prediction.”  

Warner Bros. released a Spawn movie in 1997, through its New Line Cinema imprint. The movie earned $88 million at the box office — about double its budget — but was not regarded especially well by critics or audiences. McFarlane started talking about another movie in very specific terms in around 2016, saying that he had an Oscar-winning actor interested (this later turned out to be Jamie Foxx, who remains attached to the project). The plan is for the movie to be a hard-R horror film, rather than playing in the superhero genre like the previous movie did.

For almost a decade, McFarlane has been saying that he plans to direct the movie himself. There’s no word yet on whether that will still happen, or if he will have a new collaborator join once the movie goes into active production. Hopefully, fans will get more information about King Spawn at SDCC later this week!