Jamie Foxx Offered The Role Of 'Spawn' In Comic Book Reboot

Jamie Foxx could be in line to become the latest Hollywood mega star to feature in a comic book adaptation.

After having previously starred as Electro in the Spiderman franchise, he now looks set to play Image Comic's antihero Spawn in a film directed by the comic book's creator.

Whilst Foxx hasn't officially signed on to the project, he has spoken in the past about his desire to play the character.

Spawn was brought to the big screen back in 1997, when Michael Jai White became the first African-American to take the lead in a superhero flick, but it is being rebooted, this time with creator Todd McFarlane at the helm as the director.

Spawn will be produced by Blumhouse and will have a pretty low budget - especially when compared with the budget of current superhero blockbusters like Avengers: Infinity War.

McFarlane has taken the project on as a personal mission and hopes it will be a gritty, R-rated comic book reboot. Given that Blumhouse have previously brought out films such as Get Out, Paranormal Activity, and Split, that seems like it can be pretty much guaranteed.

Five years ago, Foxx said in an interview that Spawn was one of two characters that he was desperate to play. He said: "Spawn is one, yeah, and Mike Tyson. Those are two roles I would just love to do. I'm aggressively pursuing them."

Well, they hope to start filming the movie this year for a 2019 release, so hopefully they've managed to get a deal across the line that will see him take the role.

Spawn is a former soldier who was assassinated by his partner and sent to Hell. Whilst in Hell he made a deal with an evil being to go back to earth to see his wife, but was transformed into some sort of demonic creature and had little memory of his former life.

He eventually becomes a dark antihero hunting down bad guys for fun.

One problem with Foxx's involvement in the film is that one of the things we already know about the plot is that it won't feature the title character all that much.

Todd McFarlane has said that the character of Spawn will be like the shark in Jaws - that is, spotted infrequently but used to great effect.

The main plot will focus on the character of Twitch, a main figure in the comic books.

The big question will be whether an actor of Foxx's stature is willing to play that role. We'll see.