Always a superhero movie bridesmaid, never a superhero movie bride. According to Deadline, Jeremy Renner has joined Todd McFarlane’s Spawn movie, which is set to star Jamie Foxx as a quieter, spookier version of the eponymous cape-wearing, chain-slinging “hero.” Renner will be playing Detective “Twitch” Williams, a detective who works with Spawn to accomplish his goal of murdering bad guys. That means he’ll be an important supporting character who isn’t as flashy as the main guy, which is pretty much the same role he’s been playing in the Avengers movies (and some of the Mission: Impossible movies).
In a statement, McFarlane weirdly insulted Renner by noting that the Twitch character “doesn’t need to be a bodybuilder or GQ handsome,” just that he has to be a regular guy “who’s a person you’ve met before.” McFarlane, who created Spawn and is making his directorial debut here, said that Renner—like Foxx—was the first person he thought of for the role, and he compared it to what Renner did in The Hurt Locker as “the army grunt doing the job.”
Spawn is being produced by horror studio Blumhouse, but it still doesn’t have a distributor.