Spawn is slithering closer and closer to the silver screen.

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In the past fortnight alone, we’ve learned that seasoned comic book scribe Todd McFarlane is rustling up a “dark and heavy” interpretation of the titular demon, who won’t speak a single word in the R-rated reboot – an R-rated reboot that’s said to be decidedly different from Hollywood’s other adult-oriented comic book movies: Logan and Deadpool.

McFarlane is beginning to make serious headway, too, after the writer-director confirmed to ComicBook.com that Blumhouse is now casting the net in search of Spawn‘s ensemble.

We just officially the other day had our first casting meeting, and so what that means for anyone listening today is with the final script we’re going to start sending that into Hollywood to actually go pick up the cast members.

Not for the first time, Todd McFarlane proceeded to compare Spawn to Jaws in that Albert Francis “Al” Simmons won’t have much screen time in the final product – hence the decision to make his demonic alter-ego a mute. There is another character, though, and he’s currently going by the name “Twitch.”

So what you do during that first couple of meetings is go through all the characters and then sort of throw some names and bat some names around for people you think might fit it. More specifically, are there actors or characters you’ve seen in other movies that you think fall into that pool, because all of that gives the casting director a picture so that they can go ‘oh, okay, I know who to go after now that we’re doing it.’ So we’ve officially begun the casting process.

Twitch, much like sheriff Martin Brody, is the central hero of Spawn – the anchor point around which Todd McFarlane will build his story. Firm details are naturally few and far between, but later in the interview, the illustrious scribe hinted at a female lead who won’t bow to genre stereotypes.

There is a big police component in this movie, but Sam is yet to be his partner in the story that I’m writing [Sam & Twitch]. The big role is Twitch and Spawn, and then we do have another police role, his current partner in this movie, who is our quasi-Sam but it’s not Sam….And then there’s a female lead that’s in there. It’s not a love interest or any of the typical movie tropes.

Continuing on, he said:

There’s really two big roles in the script though. 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. Twitch is the role in this one, and 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.

With casting now underway, Spawn is finally – finally! – beginning to fall into place. Barring some unforeseen hiccup, McFarlane’s R-rated reboot is on course for a 2019 release, and we’ll keep you posted should that situation change.