A story that flew under the radar of many, Baby Driver and Django Unchained star, Jamie Foxx is set to star in in a reboot of Spawn, a Blumhouse film which will also be the directorial debut of Spawn creator, Todd McFarlane himself.

First reported by Deadline, Foxx will play the lead character, Al Simmons who was betrayed by his fellow CIA Black Ops members, where his corpse set aflame upon his death. He then made a deal in Hell where he was convinced to become a Hellspawn warrior in exchange for being able to be reunited with his wife. Of course he was double crossed and we are left with one of the most iconic characters to ever hit the comics in the 90s.

In an interview with Deadline, McFarlane said his silver screen version of Spawn to be ‘a man of few words’. “The scariest movies, from Jaws to John Carpenter’s The Thing, or The Grudge and The Ring, the boogeyman doesn’t talk,” McFarlane quipped.

Revealing his vision of the movie, McFarlane who also clarified that it will not be an origin story added “I’ve got a trilogy in mind here, and I’m not inclined in this first movie to do an origin story.”

“If you want to see something creepy and powerful where you go, just what the hell was that? I’m not going to explain how Spawn does what he does; he is just going to do it. We’ll eventually do some of the background if we make a trilogy, but that’s not this first movie. The first movie is just saying, do you believe? And if you believe than that’s good because I’m hoping to take you for a long ride with this franchise.” he added.

McFarlane also said  that Foxx was the actor he had in his mind to play Al Simmons when penning the script. “Jamie came to my office five years ago, and he had an idea about Spawn and we talked about it. I never forgot him, and when I was writing this script, you sort of plug people in, and he was my visual guy and I never let go of him. When I got done and my agents and everybody was talking about what actor, I said, I’m going to Jamie first and until he says no I don’t want to think about anyone else because I’ve never had anyone else in my head. Luckily, he hadn’t forgotten either. I said, ‘Hey, I’m back to talk about Spawn again, and he was like, let’s do it.’”

In the 1997 movie, Michael Jai White played the lead character alongside John Leguizamo as The Violator. No word as of who is set to play the demonic antagonist, or whether he is set to return in this reboot which will be R-rated.

We will keep you updated on this news as we receive more info including its expected release date.

Source: Deadline