Old School Is Often The Best School. Special FX Legend Greg Nicotero Joins Spawn
Hello nerds!
Todd McFarlane is rebooting his most famous creation, Spawn. This time around they're going low-budget and sort of gritty, and it will favor practical FX as opposed to CGI. However, that doesn't mean this movie's quality will suffer. Quite the contrary actually. In fact, they seem to be going out of their way to hire the best possible talent they can find.
For those unaware, Jamie Foxx will be taking on the titular role of Spawn with Hawkeye himself, Jeremy Renner as Detective Twitch Williams. So, the studio is definitely bring on some of the best actors they can find to lead the movie. Which studio, you ask? None other Blumhouse frickin' Productions. Plus, the reboot also written and directed by creator Todd McFarlane. Holy shit, right? Just wait, there's more. It's been revealed the Spawn reboot has found yet another master of their craft to tackle the film's practical FX.
It's been revealed McFarlane's Spawn has tapped KNB EFX to help create the new design for Spawn in the upcoming reboot and not only that, but one of the group's legendary foundser will oversee the film's FX as well. Greg Nicotero the director/make-up special FX creator/executive producer for AMC's The Walking Dead will be overseeing Spawn. Needless to say with this group of insanely talented people, Spawn will will melt fucking faces! In the best possible way.
In an interview with ComicBook.com, McFarlane elaborated shared his excitement to be working with Nicotero and KNB, as he wanted to go practical with the FX, as opposed to CGI, and KNB is about as good as it gets for practical FX.
“When I conceived of the story to start with, I never really thought of it as big special effects extravaganza because I knew we weren’t going to have the budget for it. So I knew I was going to rely heavily on practical makeup and costuming, and one of the places that kept popping up was my good pal Greg Nicotero on his KNB Group. And he’s obviously done a tremendous amount of work on dozens and dozens of movies. The sort of serendipitous part of it is that Greg was there at the beginning 20 years ago for the original Spawn movie.”
For those unfamiliar, Spawn is the tale of a former assassin turned Hellspawn warrior, who then basically tells hell to "Eff off" and uses his evil powers to save people and fight other creatures from Hell. Well, Twitch teams up with the demonic antihero to track down his daughter's killer and from there the story gets real interesting. The fact the film is keeping the FX practical is a real bonus as well. All apologies to the original 1997 film, but the CGI was atrocious as balls. So, the fact the film is going practical FX is a real treat.
And speaking of, Greg Nicotero had some kind words to share about McFarlane and why he's excited to work on this new project with him.
“I’ve been friends with Todd since we did the original Spawn, and the guy’s just a genius,” said Nicotero. “I love the way his mind works. He thinks very, very graphically. I know he really loves the idea of Spawn being dark, and I love the animated show. It’s just a really great opportunity for us to get a chance to collaborate again.”
The Special FX icon then went on to talk a bit about what we can expect from the movie and it's terribly intriguing.
“It was a really fun ... We spent about six weeks coming up with some concept art, and designing the character, and a lot of it was kind of getting to the roots of what he’s about. He’s this sort of part feral animal, driven completely by this rage that he has, and he really embraced the idea of getting the sense of how much we want to see of this character, and what we want the audience to see. It’s always the situation where you give the audience at times glimpses of things to allow them to put things together in their minds, and I think there’s a very specific way that Todd wants to build these impressions of what Spawn is, and what he looks like by starting out with some kind of simple, very evocative imagery, and flashes. One minute he’s there, and the next minute he’s not. Kind of cool stuff.”
Cool stuff, indeed. Spawn is a story that deserves to be told on the big screen. It's dark, ultra-violent, funny and completely engrossing. I'm so motherfudging excited for this movie I could shit.
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