A reboot of the Spawn franchise has been in discussions for a long time, so long in fact that many fans have completely given up on it ever happening. However, Todd McFarlane has now given a new glimmer of hope that the R-rated reboot of the horror franchise could find a new home on streaming as a series rather than the trapped-in-development-hell movie that has been in consideration for almost a decade.

Todd McFarlane made the first fully official announcement that he was planning to join forces with Blumhouse Productions to reboot the Spawn franchise as the R-rated movie it should be, rather than the PG-13 iteration that was released in the 1990s, in 2017, but the rumors of a reboot started long before that. However, despite several vague updates from both McFarlane and Blumhouse’s Jason Blum, there has been nothing concrete pinning down writers, directors, or a date of when everything could start coming together.

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In an interview with ComicBook.com during San Diego Comic-Con, McFarlane mentioned that there had been discussions about potentially abandoning the movie concept and developing Spawn into a streaming series instead. With many horror franchises such as Resident Evil and The Exorcist having switched from movies to TV shows with varying results, it could be the way out of limbo Spawn has been looking for. McFarlane said:

“The answer is you should probably think about it. What if one of the big networks come out and draw up a ton of cash and say they want to make it a streaming movie? My only hesitation for that kind of deal right now is that there’s no data that I can think of that somebody’s been able to build a [movie] franchise starting as a streaming [series]. [Franchises] start in the theaters, then you can do side movies, then you can go to a series spun off from it.”

Todd McFarlane Has Been Holding Out to Build a New Spawn Franchise

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Spawn’s development mostly seems to have been hindered by previous studio reluctance to invest much money into R-rated comic book movies. However, the release of Joker suddenly opened doorways to some comic book adaptations being more grounded and gritty and still being able to pull in over $1 billion at the box office. With streaming now a real option, many fans will be hoping that Spawn can finally make a reappearance sooner rather than later.