Spawn (1997) on Netflix
CIA operative Al Simmons is sent by his superior, Jason Wynn, to a biochemical weapons site in North Korea, where Wynn orders his killing. In Hell, the demon Malebolgia offers a bargain.
- Netflix3.3/5
- IMDb5.2/1077,354 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes17%
Trailer
Plot summary
Al Simmons serves as a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps and works as a CIA operative. His superior, Jason Wynn, sends him to enter a biochemical weapons site in North Korea, and quietly tells his own assassin, Jessica Priest, to end Simmons' life there. The plant blows up and Simmons is killed. He wakes in Hell, where Malebolgia, one of its rulers, proposes a trade: if Simmons leads the demon's army at Armageddon, he may go back to Earth to see Wanda Blake, his wife. Simmons agrees and returns as a Hellspawn. Five years have passed, and Wanda is married to Terry Fitzgerald, Simmons' closest friend, who is raising Cyan, Simmons' daughter. A clown-like demon, the Violator, serves as his guide. Simmons also meets Zack, a homeless boy, and Cogliostro, an old Hellspawn.
Cast
- Tony Haneyas African Liaison
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Spawn (1997)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Spawn is one of the first films to feature an African American actor portraying a major comic book superhero. Other black superhero films came first, such as The Meteor Man in 1993, but Spawn was the first to be based on a major comic book.
- Columbia Pictures wanted Spawn when the comic book launched in 1992, but negotiations fell through because Todd McFarlane felt the studio was not giving him enough creative control. He eventually sold the film rights to New Line Cinema for $1, in exchange for creative input and merchandising rights.
- Michael Jai White endured two to four hours of make-up, including a full glued-on bodysuit, yellow contact lenses that irritated his eyes and a mask that restricted his breathing; he said his long-time experience with martial arts helped him endure it. John Leguizamo's Clown make-up took eight hours at first and left him with blisters and callouses.
- Spawn was green-lit at $20 million, but the visual effects pushed the budget to $40-45 million, a third of it spent on the effects, on a shooting schedule of only 63 days. To cut production time by a week, producer Clint Goldman lent $1 million to engage John Grower's Santa Barbara Studios for the Hell sequences.
- The visual effects shot count grew from 77 to over 400, created by 22 companies in the United States, Canada and Japan and requiring 70 people and nearly 11 months. More than half of the final effects shots were delivered two weeks before the film's debut.
- Visual effects supervisor 'Spaz' Williams, who had created the T. Rex in Jurassic Park, was responsible for the Violator: with KNB EFX Group he built a small 24-inch reference model and a full size 11-foot model, and the small one was cut up and laser scanned so a team at ILM could create a digital armature of the creature.
- In the comics Terry Fitzgerald, Al Simmons' best friend, is black; in the film he is white, played by D. B. Sweeney. Todd McFarlane said the studio made the change to avoid having too many black leads, as it believed this would give the false impression that the film's target audience was the African American demographic.
