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Todd McFarlane has been a titan in the comic book industry for over 40 years. From founding Image Comics to forging McFarlane toys, there isn’t a corner of fandom that the Emmy-winning writer hasn’t touched.
Heroic Hollywood caught up with Todd McFarlane leading up to his recent appearance at Megacon in Orlando for an exclusive interview. During the chat, McFarlane gave fans a long-awaited update on the upcoming King Spawn film, explained his philosophy in running McFarlane toys, and revealed new updates on some of his most anticipated projects.
The upcoming King Spawn film was originally aiming for 2025. Is there any hope for it to start shooting sometime this year?
You know, I I’m not I’m not familiar enough with Hollywood to understand the lead times, right? We’re already into 2025, so by the time you know, we get that script done, we get the the sale done, you get the budget, you find your location. The chances of anything happening in 2025 is like almost nothing, right?
So now the question becomes, can you even then get it done and produced and edit it and they still have slots open somewhere in 2026, right? Because again, it’s just looking at it on its face, you know, it might be a good Halloween type release, right? But if people have that, then all of a sudden they say things like, oh, we gotta wait till the next Halloween.
You know, these release, like, all of a sudden can jump a year very quickly. So we’ll we’ll see. right? I mean, again, it Jason Blum like said, it told me plenty of time. ‘Todd and I get down when it gets done,’ right? And it’s a frustrating but truism of that industry,
You mentioned the script briefly is the script still being worked on?
Yeah, oh, yeah.
Are you still confident in Blumhouse as a studio to bring Spawn to life the way you want it to be brought to life?
Yeah, I I’ve got a good relationship with Jason [Blum] and I mean, again, I haven’t dealt with the big mechanism of Blumhouse yet, because we haven’t sort of got underway. So, hopefully, I mean, you know, he about a year and a half ago or whatever, joined forces with James Wan to sort of expand the base.
I know I’ve known Jason for a while now. I know that besides he’s just really, really good at doing what he does in the horror market. He also has done some really and has aspirations to do much more than just horror, right? Outside of it, and again, he’s had, I think, three, four movies nominated for [an] Academy Award that are that you wouldn’t necessarily call traditional sort of horror movie stuff.
So I think it at his core, Jason is a filmmaker, and he wants to make good movies for people to entertain them. And his group of people are very ambitious, so yeah, we continue we continue to have a good relationships, so just like anything else, right? You hang out with people that you like until you don’t.
It was initially reported that people like Jamie Foxx and Jeremy Renner were involved with the movie. Do you know at all if they’re still attached to King Spawn?
Yeah, yeah, because again, as time goes by, people get into their other [projects]. You never know, when a project is ready that the people that you want, whether it’s directors, writer, producers, actors, whatever, and anybody, they have their own schedule. So, again, we have our wish list, obviously, and then you deal with reality based upon your wish list.
Just this past weekend the show Death Battle announced that their next match up would be Ghost Rider vs Spawn. Do you have an opinion on who you think would win?
Yeah, Spawn wins every time.
Why do you think Spawn wins?
Spawn wins. Spawn beats Superman. Oddly, if you’ve been paying attention, and you’ve seen what he’s done in the last 30 years, if people wish to combine all of that at one moment, I don’t think there’s any other character that can say they have the power that he has to the point that you could go look up on YouTube.
There are some people put videos together and go ‘Spawns too overpowered’ because when they go through it and they go ‘he did this in this issue and this in this issue and this and this and this and this and this, and they go on for about 40 minutes, then you just go ‘okay, if you put all that together into one punch, right?’ I’m being silly, but it was like, it’s a knockout punch .
And so the piece that I have to do is give reasons why he’s not using all of those powers so that there’s no jeopardy in the storytelling. I’m probably completely biased, but I’m like, nobody takes down Spawn. Who’s the guy who’s taking down Spawn, right? That’s just a hell guy, that’s Ghost Rider, he takes out Ghost Rider, right? All the other guys. the question is, can Superman take him out? That’s the bigger question, so, hopefully we get to that battle.
Three years ago at this point, you did a Batman/Spawn back in 2022, which follows up Spawn/Batman in ’94. Do you hope that maybe one day that comic or that concept gets adapted to an animated movie?
The 10 year old boy says absolutely. Like, what what are you talking about? When we were kids, a matter of fact, you don’t have to even be kids, but for sure when you were kids- Here’s the one thing that you didn’t pay attention to. What was the company that made the toys and what was the studio that made the movies?
All you want was like, man, if they could ever put King Kong and Godzilla together, right? If Aliens could ever meet Freddy Krueger. You’re constantly doing this, right? Man, wouldn’t it be cool if Spider Man and Batman got together. Like, we’re always doing it.
The problem ends up being, isn’t that people like you and I aren’t playing that game and the Internet isn’t playing that game every day. It’s then you go, oh, those are legally different companies and they would have to then do a joint effort and the joint effort would have to then qualify to get the teams together.
So, yes, yes, yes, but you have to go, ‘Hey, Warner Brothers’ like, all of a sudden Spawn’s at Sony. You have to then get Sony and Warner Brothers to play, right? And that that’s above my pay grade at some point.
You’ve been in the toy making game for a lot of years with McFarlane toys. Have you seen that, over time, there has been a transition to adults taking over more of the market of buying figures?
Yeah, so not only have I seen it, I’ve seen the data. So when I first broke into toys in 1994. The hundred percent pie, the big- should come as no surprise- The biggest pie was six to eight year olds, right? Basically action figures. I’m talking about the action figure category, just action figures, not the other aisles. It was the action figures were being bought by six and eight year olds.
The second biggest piece of the pie was preschool. So, oh, you know, here’s a big fun Yoda. We’ll give it to my kid who’s, you know, four years old, preschool. And then the third biggest pie, you know, this is in 1994, even back then, was starting to climb up was adolescents and then collectors.
The latest data now, fast forward 30 years, I’ve been in toys the biggest piece of the pie? Collectors. Collectors are out buying, action figures at a higher rate than six to eight year olds. Because why? I think because six and eight year olds have this thing called a cell phone in their hand and they’re playing video.
They got lots of other things that are interesting to them and so the sales have been going down while [the collector’s] category has been exploding, right? And so now [adults are] the majority.
You’ve stated before that McFarlane Toy’s primary driver for making a new figure is if it’s cool. Does that rule still apply now?
That has to be at the forefront. And then the only difference is, you then have to take the rules that are that are put upon you, right? So if I’m doing somebody else’s license, they give me sort of do’s and don’ts. If I’m selling them in Walmart or Target, there are do’s and don’ts that they want, right?
So I have to take all of where the edge basically of the yard is, and then my goal is to once they give me the parameters, to bang against those walls at all times and see if I can’t move an extra foot when they’re either not looking, or more importantly, educate them and say, ‘I don’t think your parameter should be as tight as they are. I think you should be thinking a little bit bigger.’
But I’ve been doing that for 30 years and sometimes you get ‘No’ the whole time. Sometimes halfway through, they’ll go ‘Oh, man, I didn’t know that. Yeah, okay, fine.’ Cause the marketplace, the dynamics of the marketplace change. And then other times they they just go, ‘Oh, man, somebody told me the same thing you were telling me. Yeah, we should go and do that,’ because our dynamics have changed. But at the end of the day, selling a good looking product at a fair price with the with a brand name on it even better. That’s a sort of a simple recipe that works.
Is that any sort of figure that you wanted to get out, but you haven’t been able to do yet? Or any idea that you wanted to do, that hasn’t worked out?
Look, I’ve said before, first off, name’s Todd. Only rhymes with God. But if I was God for one day, right? I would make sure that I’d stop all wars, feed everybody, make sure everybody was healthy. And then I would make every toy contract magically get this line in there that says, ‘McFarlane gets to make one figure from this brand, right?’
So it’s not necessarily that there’s a brand that I need to make. It’s just a, ‘oh, I wouldn’t it be cool to do like one Godzilla toy? Wouldn’t it be cool to do like one Star Wars toy? Or wouldn’t it be cool that we do one Ninja turtle toy, or wouldn’t it be cool-‘ So you just look at all the brands and go, ‘but if I had one, I had one mulligan for one of them,’ that would be that would be awesome.
A few years ago you founded McFarlane films. one of the projects that was announced to come out was a collaboration with wiip and Rooster Teeth for a project called RAW 10. Last year Rooster Teeth shut down and was just recently brought back to life. Is that project still in the works at all?
Yep. Yup. We’re talking about doing things like comic books for it too, but, yeah, the people that were at both ends that are still excited about it. But here’s the thing. Hollywood as a whole, is in a malaise. So, it’s not the projects that I’m working on, it’s all projects that lots of people are working on.
And that city is going through some consternations right now that began with the advent of the pandemic when the whole model got shifted. People weren’t going to theaters, and then everybody was watching online. So then everybody thought that streaming was the answer. And so they walked away from cable and, to some extent, the legacy channel.
And they’re finding out that just streaming can’t support all those things that they used to get money on and they’re trying to still figure it out, right? So, Hollywood is in an interesting place right now and my guess as an outsider, is that there are gonna have to be some corrections. And the rules, the old rules, aren’t gonna be able to get applied one hundred percent. Some of them are gonna have to bend on some of the rules.
With how slow Hollywood has been, do you have a desire to turn to independent production houses?
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Has there been any movement towards that?
There hasn’t been any movement. But it is a thought that is always in the back of my mind. For a guy who’s always gone independent, right? It’s just part of my personality. So, we’ll see and if the obvious options aren’t in front of us, then you gotta go to Plan B.
Definitely. There’s been a lot of success, especially in the indie animation sphere, of creators finding a new home on places like Youtube.
Oh, yeah. What are you talking about? If you look at some of the YouTube channels, they’re getting bigger audiences than the television and some streaming stuff. So the the model isn’t the same, right? The model isn’t the same and so I’m curious about all of it.
I’ve been talking to people off and on that are involved in each one of those aspects, everything from the sort of the classic way that you go and get TV and film, all the way to people who are kind of the pioneers of some of those newer 21st century products. So I don’t think there’s ever a bad path. Always keep your mind open because again, you never know when you gotta turn into a certain direction.
Spawn is now the longest-running independent comic series with over 300 issues. After all this time, what keeps you striving to create?
Well, I like it, right? Spawn, because I own that lock stock and barrel, I don’t have to ask anybody’s approval. You know those books they used to come out with? It was like ‘chicken noodle for the soul?’, right? Spawn is my chicken noodle for my soul. That no matter what, no matter what’s happening in all my other businesses, if I have to deal with other people that have power over me and they get to have votes- Which they should, because if it’s their characters and their IPs and their money and whatever else they should.
But no matter what happens, if it’s a a bad day, I can go to that corner, which is Spawn, and I can just go ‘I’ve got an idea and I’m just gonna do it.’ And I don’t have to talk to any other human being. Now, that can seem self-serving, and that can seem selfish and egotistical, and I would agree with all the above. But it also is a piece of sanity for me, personally that I need, that I can never let go of it.
So where people think, ‘oh, man, 360 issues Todd! Man, like that was like, what keeps you going?’ Like, it’s not an effort, right? You’re asking it like it’s an effort. It’s not an effort. The effort to put out the next issue is just as easy as putting out issue number three tomorrow.
