Those looking forward to the (hopeful) big screen return of Todd McFarlane’s Spawn might be interested to know that, surprisingly, Spawn himself won’t be the central character. Instead, the honor will be shared with Twitch.
In an interview with Comicbook.com, creator Todd McFarlane said that the story will focus on both Spawn and Detective Maximilian “Twitch” Williams, a police officer who lives in a dark and gritty version of New York City where superheroes are atypical.
There’s two big roles in the script. There’s obviously sort of Spawn himself, although in a weird way it’s not the biggest role, and then there’s the cop. The cop is this character Twitch who’s been there since issue #1… I sort of refer to him as my sheriff Brody, who is the sheriff in the Jaws movie. Although it was called Jaws, Jaws didn’t really talk a lot in his movie, right? He just kind of showed up at the opportune time to make the movie worthwhile.
Twitch and his partner Sam Burke have been around since the beginning of the Spawn franchise. They got their own comic book spinoff in 1999, called Sam and Twitch, due to their popularity...and BBC America has plans to turn their story into a TV show, with the help of Kevin Smith. No word yet whether this film reboot changes those plans at all.
McFarlane went on to explain that he plans on letting the comic’s central figure take a back seat so viewers can instead witness how all humans react to Spawn’s supernatural world and its rules. Given that Twitch has a partner, the interplay between the two may become a pivotal part of the show. The pair can help analyze and argue what they’re going through, much Brody did with Quint in the aforementioned Spielberg flick.
It was previously announced during San Diego Comic-Con that McFarlane was pairing with Jason Blum and Blumhouse Productions to bring the character back to the big screen. There’s no confirmation when things will get underway. All we know at this point is that McFarlane will write the first draft of the screenplay, as well as direct the film, should it go into production.