It’s been teased for months and years, but now Deadline says it is official: Jamie Foxx will star in a new version of Spawn, the long-running Image Comic series created by Todd McFarlane about an undead former soldier with super powers and an awesome prehensile cape. McFarlane will make his directorial debut on the project, which is being produced by Blumhouse.

Per Deadline, here’s the official plot synopsis:

Foxx will play the character who started out in the comics as Al Newman, a member of a CIA black ops team who is betrayed twice. After being set up by his cohorts to be murdered with his corpse set aflame, Newman is double crossed in Hell. He is convinced to become a Hellspawn warrior in exchange for being able to be reunited with his wife. But Spawn finds himself stuck in a demonic creature shell, and that his wife moved on and married his best friend. So this is one pissed off antihero who attends to dispatching the scum of the city in good and evil battles that encompass earth, heaven and hell.

Not sure where they got Al Newman from, since in the comics the character goes by Al Simmons. Maybe they’re changing the name to distinguish this version from the one made in 1997 starring Michael Jai White as the title character? Or maybe McFarlane is a huge Seinfeld fan? I honestly don’t know.

I do know that Foxx is a good choice to play Spawn, even if McFarlane claims the character won’t be talking much in this version. He also told Deadline this Spawn won’t be 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.”)

Here was Foxx’s statement on the news:

[McFarlane] was taken aback when I told him with the enthusiasm of a young child that more than anything I wanted to put my name in the hat to embody his beloved character Spawn…. I told him no one would work harder than me if given the opportunity… well… the opportunity is here!

McFarlane also claims that he has a trilogy of films in mind. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, my dude. I seem to recall a lot of talk about a sequel to the Michael Jai White Spawn movie too.

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