For those eagerly anticipating Todd McFarlane’s upcoming Spawn movie, you’ll be pleased to know that the current plan is for the picture to start shooting in February.

McFarlane was speaking at New York Comic Con – as reported by Deadline – and he added that pre-production will commence just after Christmas ahead of a February start for filming. Interestingly, the iconic comic book name added that the movie will be even more R-rated than Deadpool.

Of course, for those of you who keep up with McFarlane on Facebook, you’ll have already seen that he was at NYCC and absolutely loving the experience. In terms of industry names who interact with their audience, Todd is right up there with how he dishes out Facebook videos every few days where he often offers up tips on how to draw some of the greatest heroes and villains in comics.

Furthermore, at NYCC he also discussed the budget placed on the Spawn reboot, explaining, “I’m spending my own money. So who cares if it doesn’t work out. It’s a $10 million budget movie, and they would just get a 22-year-old punk director. I just want to be the old punk directing it.”

Considering that Blumhouse are producing the film, it shouldn’t really come as a surprise that the budget is only $10 million. After all, this is the company who specialise in low budget efforts. Of course, by modern-day superhero and comic book stakes, that’s a pittance, for so many of those films now cost hundreds of millions of dollars on a regular basis.

As for Spawn as a character, he first appeared back in 1992 when he headlined McFarlane’s Spawn #1. A dark and brutal character who was so often deemed an antihero, Spawn quickly became a cult favourite and was often cited as one of the poster boys of the darker books of the day. In terms of powers, his Hellspawn abilities allow him to shape-shift, teleport and get all kinds of nasty with a vast array of weapons.

This won’t be the first cinematic outing for Spawn, for Michael Jai White starred as the character in 1997’s dud Spawn. Here’s hoping this next big screen adventure for this hugely popular character is at least far superior to that balls-up.