Spawn in Hollywood

Or…How A Now Barely Watchable Movie Made Comic Book and Hollywood History: Part Two

Nov 19, 2024

Part Two: Pre-Production and Casting

The film was on.

Then New Line merged with Warner Bros after losing money on the much hyped The Island of Dr. Moreau and The Long Kiss Goodnight. Fortunately for McFarlane, New Line retained its independence. There were bonuses built in and, as executive producer, McFarlane was given the right of veto over all aspects of the production, including the selection of writers, director and actors. With that veto in hand, McFarlane threw himself into the production and was more hands on than expected. Generally an Executive Producer leaves the day-to-day creative decisions to the producers, director, actors and others involved on the set, and remains apart from the film process, concentrating on the business aspect of filmmaking. Not McFarlane. Spawn was his baby, and he was going to be part of the entire process from start to finish. He would be a highly visible, and vocal, presence on the set.

‘The COO, Michael DeLuca, is a comics fan,’ said Terry Fitzgerald.

He's always liked comics and loved Spawn. Better than having an executive attached at a major studio who hadn't heard about Spawn or hadn't read it, saying, ‘So, Spawn's this, like, surfer dude from California who turns into this dead guy?’ Uh, yeah. Hopefully, by the time Spawn hits the screen, there won't be this Yellow Submarine mentality.[i]

Dippé was given one order from the head of New Line, Bob Shaye, who reiterated DeLuca’s request. ‘Mark, you better deliver a PG-13 film.’ To this all Dippé could say was no problem, a PG-13 film would be the result. But that promise went out the window once filming began.

DeLuca set the tone early for what he expected. ‘Any character that has as established an audience as Spawn has great chances,’ he said. ‘The key to the movie being a success is that it maintains a PG-13 rating but retains its darkness.[ii]‘

The first mention of a Spawn movie came when New Line announced it as a future project, to be released in 1997/1998, in a series of advertisements in October/November 1995.

A budget of $20,000,000[iii] was assigned. Directors were approached, amongst them were the directors of two of the more successful superhero movies of recent times – Tim Burton, who had helmed Batman and Batman Returns, and Alex Proyas who had made The Crow. Both turned the film down.

Writing the film was Alan McElroy. McElroy had also written the HBO Animated Spawn series and was also writing the Curse of Spawn comic book, which served him in good stead.

‘Spawn was fun to write,’ McElroy said, ‘for years, I've had people tone me down on most of the stuff I write: ‘This is too dark,’ or ‘It's too violent.’ Spawn was close to the kind of thing I like to write.’

I'm not a comic book reader by any means, but I picked it up and was immediately hooked. It was great on all levels: the artwork, the stories, the characters. It was incredibly interesting.[iv]

As with everyone else connected with the film, McElroy was aware Todd was pulling the strings. ‘Todd (McFarlane) is a very hands-on type of guy. He respects writers, but he won't allow his vision to be warped in such a way that it's not recognizable. Todd stands his ground on everything to make sure it's true to his work.’

‘Alan seemed to really get the different layers of Spawn,’ McFarlane said, ‘he understood the concept of the character...that he is a government trained, ex-assassin, so he is not going to speak the Queen's English. He's a twenty-eight-year-old punk with a chip on his shoulder and he's been given a lot of power. Sometimes, he is tempted to abuse that power and occasionally he does. All the little nuances that make up who Spawn is, Alan seemed to tap into that very fast.[v]‘

McElroy explained his attraction to Spawn.

I loved that Spawn is a guy who is steeped in all this darkness but also has lightness to him. He went to Hell and back and he has all these dark powers, but deep within his soul is this moral core. He won't be forced to do things that go against what he believes in, no matter what. The fact that he is surrounded and consumed by darkness, yet he fights it and turns it to his advantage, really intrigued me. I don't know why I relate to that, but I definitely have an affinity for the character.[vi]

Oddly enough, McElroy had been working on a script of his own, which bore striking similarities to Spawn. The movie, called Bat Out Of Hell, was about a man who escapes Hell and is chased by clown-like bounty hunters. Dippe had seen the script and felt that McElroy had written a good portion of Spawn already, albeit without knowing he was doing so. After McElroy had read the comic books, he was ready to turn in his draft.

I stayed pretty close to the original material. All the main characters are there; the story is as it appears in the comic book, in terms of the issue of Al Simmons' murder and going to Hell and returning five years later. All that is in the film. A comic book is obviously episodic, and I had to condense it into a movie. Essentially, I looked at what it was about thematically. On a spiritual level, what does Spawn have to face? His ethics, his morality, even his own humanity become incredible dilemmas for him. The appeal of the comic is the human issues it explores - love, death, betrayal, revenge and the nature of good and evil as it relates to a man's soul. Spawn deals with real and basic feelings that we all relate to.[vii]

As with any film adaptation, changes were made. Wanda Blake was no longer Al Simmons’ wife.

‘In the comic, Al Simmons is married to Wanda, while in the movie she's his fiancée,’ explained McElroy.

That was due to a note from the studio. Mike DeLuca felt the love would be stronger if it was a promised love instead of a fulfilled love. I disagree. Having been married for years, I think love grows in marriage. These young execs who haven’t been married yet think, ‘Once you get married, love dies!’

His main change was Al Simmons’ assassin, Jessica Priest.

‘That was my idea,’ McElroy said. ‘I did it because there were no strong females in the piece, other than Wanda. This was an opportunity to add one. Mike DeLuca was very resistant to it, but Todd said, ‘It sounds like a good idea,’ so Mike said OK. She's as brutal and intense as you would expect, not soft because she's a woman. She's actually more cunning.’

These changes came from Dippé and not McFarlane directly, although McFarlane would have to have known and approved of them.

‘Mark had a definite idea of what he wanted to see,’ McElroy explained later, ‘and because he is such an effects expert, he knew what could be done and what couldn't. That made my job a lot easier. We talked about the story for months. He would suggest certain sequences and events and I would structure them logically.[viii]‘

In May 1996, New Line announced the casting of Michael Jai White. White, a martial artist who was then known for playing boxer turned ear biter Mike Tyson in an HBO mini-series. Others considered for the title role were Wesley Snipes (who would turn it down because he wanted to make Blade), Cuba Gooding Jr (who would have a star turn in Jerry Maguire), Samuel L Jackson, Will Smith and pretty much every black male actor of a certain age. Also in the mix were rap artists LL Cool J and Snoop Dogg.

(Todd McFarlane and Michael Jai White as Spawn)

Michael Jai White viewed Spawn in a different light to others connected to the film, describing him as, ‘an angry brother in a crazy, uncomfortable costume kicking a lotta criminal butt.[ix]‘

With White on board, the budget had increased to between $35,000,000 to $40,000,000. New Line held strong hopes that Spawn would see the start of a new franchise.

The casting of Martin Sheen brought the film a degree of credibility, in the same way that Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman had done Superman and Jack Nicholson for Batman. Sheen was a veteran actor and respected in Hollywood circles, but he was never a name above the title for big budget films. Best known for his performance in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (a role that would see him suffer a heart attack during filming) he was experiencing a career resurgence with a stellar, yet understated, performance alongside Michael Douglas in The American President.

Even though Spawn the comic book was one of the most popular in the United States at the time, not everyone who was cast had heard of Spawn. Sheen was one of those.

‘I was sitting in the backyard one day, and my grandson said ‘So, what are you doing?’ and I said, ‘Well, I'm gonna do this film, Spawn, and I start real soon. Well, he nearly fainted. He said, ‘Spawn? Spawn? Spawn? The Spawn?’ And I said, ‘What's the big deal?’ And he just looked at me and said, ‘Well, it's only the most important comic book in the world.[x]’’

Sheen quickly educated himself and, by his own account, enjoyed the company of McFarlane.

I worked with Todd on the set very little because I was only working six weeks out of the four-month shooting schedule,’ he said. ‘He is a very personable and committed young man. And it was a pleasure to work with someone who took such risks with their ideas.[xi]

Next up was John Leguizamo, who was cast as Spawn’s main nemesis, Clown.

‘He (John Leguizamo) was just brilliant, because Clown is evil incarnate,’ Dippe explained, ‘but what we wanted, and this is directly from the comic book, was a certain comedic element. Clown is sort of a screw-up from hell and a mean one. You don't want him mad at you, but he's also perversely funny. John brought just that right mixture of humor and evil to the character[xii].’

‘I was in the middle of producing The Pest and these two guys come on the set with all these pictures and say, 'It would be wonderful to have you aboard,’’ John Leguizamo remembered.

I'm like, 'Yeah, whatever, OK, let me see.' Then they gave me a toy and I am easily sold on toys. So I started thinking about it and asking all my friends. Some of them were like, ‘Yo man, Spawn, it's serious, that's the number one comic book.’[xiii]

If the toys didn’t sell Leguizamo then the promise from Dippé that he could just run with the character and ‘do some crazy shit’ certainly did.

Once committed to the film Leguizamo was all in.

I was going to be portraying a five-foot tall, fat, 300-pound clown. I started talking to Mark, to see how we might mould the character, make it maybe a little funnier and kookier. The character was so full of life in the comic book. I read as many of the books as I could so I could lift the best lines out of them.
Spawn goes for the jugular, has that aggressive thing that kids want and still has humor, character, story and the darkness you want in a superhero [xiv]

Sheen and Leguizamo were paid $2,000,000 each for their roles.

Rounding out the cast was Theresa Randle, Scottish actor Nicol Williamson (in what would be his final role) and D.B. Sweeny, best-known for Shoeless Joe Jackson in 1988s Eight Men Out.

Melinda Clarke was cast as a new character, Jessica Priest.

(Above: Rob Liefeld’s creation, Chapel, who assassinates Al Simmons and thus creates Spawn, becomes Jessica Priest for the movie)

Jessica Priest was the film equivalent of the comic book character Chapel. As Chapel was created by Rob Liefeld, McFarlane was either unable, or unwilling to use the character – which would mean obtaining permission and paying Liefeld. It was easier to create a new character and simply transfer the comic book mythos to it. Once Liefeld left the Image fold, McFarlane rewrote the origin of Spawn to bring it into line with the film. He wrote Chapel out and inserted Jessica Priest as Al Simmons assassin.

Clarke had mixed feelings about the role. She described Jessica Priest as ‘…this type-A character, the number two operative in the agency. Simmons is number one and she doesn't like that. She is very ambitious, and she is the classic vamp. She enjoys using her female powers to entice and get what she needs. She especially takes great pleasure in being the one that brings about the demise of Al Simmons.[xv]‘

Clarke had also never heard of Spawn.

I'm ashamed to say I hadn't really heard of it before, After I auditioned, I started asking around, and the people who were familiar with it were the young kids I knew. I have a friend who has a son named Connor, a very shy boy, who would never talk to me. Then one day, I went up to him and said, ‘Connor, tell me about Spawn,’ and his eyes lit up, and he was off and running.[xvi]

So far, so good. No matter how much Clarke relished the role of playing a strong female villain, and a vamp to boot, there was one aspect to the role that she simply wasn’t comfortable with – guns. Clarke hated guns, had never owned a gun let alone fired one. And the character of Jessica Priest was to be extremely adept with firearms. New Line hooked her up with a weapons expert and she soon became familiar with weapons. ‘I don't really like guns; I don't see the appeal of them. I had to train with a weapons expert and learned that I could enjoy myself as long as I respected the weapon.[xvii]‘

There was another aspect to this story though, and that would come with the novelization of the film.

Another significant change from comic book to film was the character that D.B. Sweeny was to play. His character, Al Simmons best friend Terry Fitzgerald (McFarlane had a habit of naming his characters after his friends – the dog in the movie would be named Spaz), was originally black in the comic book, but Sweeny was very white. This was seen as whitewashing by the black community.

Another difference between the film and comic book came with the character Cogliostro. In the comic book, Cogliostro sported a beard. As Williamson steadfastly refused to grow one, the beard was out.

All these changes were made with the full approval of McFarlane, so he couldn’t blame anyone else with messing with his characters.

NEXT: Filming Spawn

[i] Comics Interview: Spawn

[ii] Los Angeles Times, 12 Jan 1997

[iii] The actual budget is still largely unknown. In the August 1997 edition of American Cinematographer, the budget was listed at $43,000,000, other contemporary reports have the budget at $45,000,000. The LA Times, in August 1997, announced the budget was originally set at $20,000,000. The official budget, as listed by New Line Cinema, is $40,000,000

[iv] Aberly, Rachel. (1997, October). The Making of the Movie Spawn

[v] Ibid

[vi] Ibid

[vii] Ibid

[viii] Ibid

[ix] New York Amsterdam News, 31 Jul 1997

[x] Ibid

[xi] Martin Sheen Show, AOL, 7 Jul 1997

[xii] Ibid

[xiii] Aberly, Rachel. (1997, October). The Making of the Movie Spawn

[xiv] Ibid

[xv] Aberly, Rachel. (1997, October). The Making of the Movie Spawn