We’ve been threatened with a Spawn reboot for what feels like ages. Creator Todd McFarlane has said again and again that the reboot will be dark and rated R to fit the character. Then he said that the script was completed and he was waiting for the studios to make an offer.

So why haven’t we heard anything further about the project, other than what Todd McFarlane has said in order to sell his characters? Well, the Spawn creator recently told SyFy Wire where the problem lies.

He may have received calls from dozens of studios, both big and small, but his conditions are too stringent for any studio to accept:

So I'm going, I'm not selling it, but if you want to see the rough draft, I'll send it to you. But just so everybody knows, I write, produce, direct, non-negotiable.

So why have there been no takers?

Well, no matter how small the movie would be, it would still be too big for Todd McFarlane, who’s only directed a couple of music videos. So it’s understandable that the studios might hesitate to trust him with a high-budget superhero flick.

McFarlane did say that he could do the film for just a fraction of what a superhero movie usually costs. So he understands, but he also disagrees with the studio heads:

I wouldn't ask to be a newbie director on a script that was going to have an eighty million dollar budget for it. Why? Because as a CEO of my own corporation, I wouldn't take that deal. I wouldn't stick out $80 million and go, “They're going to put on a rookie, and he's going to basically be in charge of it.” So I've created this tight little one, and I keep saying that I think I can shoot it for ten.

Spawn has numerous superpowers, and we’re wondering how the film would look with such a small budget to work with"¦To be noted, Michael J. White’s Spawn from 1997 had a $40 million budget, and it hasn't aged very well.