Todd McFarlane's Blumhouse-backed plan to bring his own take on his comicbook creation Spawn to screens already has Jamie Foxx aboard as the title character. He's now adding someone with a little superheroic experience of their own: Jeremy Renner.
The character of Spawn, previously brought to life on screen in animated and live-action form, began life as CIA black ops team member Al Simmons (Foxx), betrayed by his colleagues and then again by Hell. After agreeing to become a Hellspawn warrior in the hopes of being reunited with his wife, he's trapped in the form, and forced to dispatch the scum of the Earth while also fighting in battles that encompass our planet, Heaven and Hell.
McFarlane's plan is not to retell Spawn's origin story, but will fill in more details about his back story if he's lucky enough to kick off a planned trilogy.
Renner is playing Detective ‘Twitch’ Williams, who has the intelligence and intuition that Spawn needs most. This unconventional detective is near fearless and compliments Spawn’s demonic powers, and it is that combination that will help Spawn win his war.
"As a first time director, I wanted to surround myself with the most talent and the most skilled people I can on all fronts," McFarlane tells Deadline. "I was lucky enough to land Jason Blum and then Jamie Foxx, and I knew the person on screen the most is this police officer, Twitch Williams. We needed as strong a person as possible because he will be the face of the film. I took my naïve Hollywood approach again, and said let’s start at the top and work down. Jeremy was at the top. I’m a huge fan of his. The character doesn’t need to be a bodybuilder or GQ handsome. I was looking for somebody who’s a person you’ve met before; I needed someone who can pull off the grief of an average human being. I’ve seen Jeremy do that in more than a few of his movies. He was at the top of my list, just like Jamie.
"Spawn is King Arthur and Twitch is Sir Lancelot, and this isn’t about physicality, or jumping over buildings. This is more a brawn and brain combination, and the first film I think of with him is The Hurt Locker, the army grunt doing the job, and that spilled out into all these roles leading up to Wind River. There was a sense of melancholy to that character that is important and that was a movie also made by a first time director, but one who wrote the thing and so wasn’t nervous about trying to get what you want. Jeremy had the experience of working with the first timer and saw that if you put a good crew together, the whole is way better than the parts and you don’t have to worry."
McFarlane and Blum are in the process of finding a distributor for the film, which will carry a boosted Blumhouse budget of around $10-12 million and an R-rating across the pond.
Renner has a voice role in animated adventure Arctic Justice and will likely show up as Hawkeye in next year's Avengers film, due on 26 April next year.
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