After dancing around the issue for years, Todd McFarlane is finally being honest with Spawn fans hoping to see the character back on the big screen. The reason for the delay isn’t because of a lack of interest or that McFarlane is slow as a snail but because of his extremely high demands. We’ve heard that he has in fact fielded calls from various producers and studios but that they are vying for control of his intellectual property created back in 1992. Here’s what he had to say about it when speaking with SyFy Wire:

“So I’m going, I’m not selling it but if you want to see the rough draft, I’ll send it to you. But just so everybody knows, I write, produce, direct, non-negotiable.”

Yes, McFarlane refuses to relinquish any control of his project, demanding full custody of the entire production right down to the screenplay. I commend him for his vigor but as powerful of a name he is, and for as long as he’s been around, he’s unproven behind the camera. No studio is going to just hand over full control to McFarlane and then guarantee they’re going to put millions behind the production and marketing. This has been his stance since day one, I’m told, with people working behind the scenes to find him a writer to work on his script alongside him. He’s rebuffed the attempts and thus here we are still talking about a Spawn movie years later.

With that said, he sounds as if he’s trying to be frugal about the budget, pointing out that he’s self-aware that he’s a newbie filmmaker and that he too would scoff at his request:

“I wouldn’t ask to be a newbie director on a script that was going to have an eighty million budget for it. Why? Because as a CEO of my own corporation, I wouldn’t take that deal. I wouldn’t stick out $80 million and go, ‘they’re going to put a rookie and he’s going to basically be in charge of it.’ So I’ve created this tight little one that I keep saying, I think I can shoot it for ten.”

But let’s be clear here, even if he’s asking for $10-20M a studio would have to put an additional $15M in marketing behind it making a recoup in the $60M range. That number feels low but considering how poorly some franchise films have done as of late (Alien: Covenant will barely make $75M), I can see why there’s legit hesitation on the studio’s part, especially if they won’t own the actually IP.

Digressing, I applaud McFarlane for sticking to his guns. While I don’t agree with him and think he could benefit from help, Spawn is a big enough brand that one day he’ll wear someone down and they’ll take a chance on him. Shit, Netflix put $60M behind a live-action adaptation of Death Note. Stand firm, Todd, one day you will own the day.