In The 'Farlane'

Spawn creator Todd McFarlane has been very chatty of late about his plans...



He told the Coming Soon crew that he has officially begun writing the screenplay for a new film based on the character.

"The story has been in my head for 7 or 8 years. The movie idea is neither a recap or continuation. It is a standalone story that will be R-rated. Creepy and scary" says McFarlane.

He adds that "the tone of this 'Spawn' movie will be for a more older audience. Like the film "The Departed".

Urp!

Spawn made the live-action leap in 1997 with a pic starring Michael Jai White and Martin Sheen, and John Leguizamo. It was widely panned.

A new animated TV series is in works as well...

In talking with McFarlane Empire Online revealed that the Oz adaptation based on his 'Twisted Land of Oz' line of toys is moving forward...

The toy line of '03 re imagined the characters from L. Frank Baum's 'Wizard of Oz' book series making the munchkins into mutants, the Tinman into a cyborg, Scarecrow into a straw-stuffed zombie, The Wizard was an-inspired Victorian gentleman meets ghoulish figure, and Dorothy looks like a goth submissive

On the script:..."they're on their second iteration right now, trying to get it into a zone that makes sense. Josh Olson wrote a draft that didn't quite strike [the studio's] fancy. Everyone was a little lukewarm. They wanted it more sexy! So they were going to do a rewrite and get some fresh eyes on "

British tabby spoke of a start date of early in 2010: "I'm sure the higher-ups.... would like to have it on their schedule, and they're probably moving in that direction. But we've seen in our lifetime thousands of cases where things don't go according to plan."

The tabloid reports also had Dakota Fanning playing Dorothy--now it's actually Dorothy's granddaughter--and a film shoot in the UK.

McFarlane said production locale hasn't been decided yet. As for Fanning: "I haven't heard that. If we just do a sugary sweet Dorothy that everybody has seen over and over for 50 years, as far as I'm concerned, that's too obvious. I'm happy to go with whoever will get the most people in the seats, but sometimes that can change from month to month."