Kevin Smith adapts Spawn spin-off Sam & Twitch for BBC

Last Updated on July 31, 2021

Near the end of the 1997 live-action SPAWN movie, two detectives that look like Sam and Twitch arrest Martin Sheen’s character Jason Wynn. It’s said that Todd McFarlane wanted a to make a follow-up movie about Sam and Twitch in which Spawn would’ve been a background character and Sam and Twitch were going to be investigating a series of murders Spawn was part of. 

But that didn’t happen.

Sam & Twitch then showed up again in the animated SPAWN mini-series that aired on HBO from 1997 through 1999, where Sam was voiced by James Keane and Twitch was voiced by Michael McShane. But then that got cancelled.

So it seemed Sam & Twitch were never to be seen on the screen again. Until today’s news that is. Turns out BBC America president and GM Sarah Barnett was recently interviewed by Deadline and had this to say about the potential series.

The potential series coming at us from Kevin fuc*ing Smith!

Here’s what Sarah Barnett had to say:

Well, we’ve got some high-profile talent that we have attached to a show that we’re doing. It’s Kevin Smith. We’re super excited about him. Obviously, he is attached to Comic Book Men in the family on AMC. He is attached to write, direct and EP a series based on the Sam And Twitch comic book series for us.

They were originally introduced in Spawn, and it’s Todd McFarlane’s comic book series about these big-city homicide detectives who face a series of super grizzly crimes that are connected to the occult. Its kind of frightening and sort of gallows humor. It’s, again, procedural, but in a very modern, contemporary way. So each episode is closed ended, although there are certain character-serialized aspects to the storytelling.

Deadline then went on to say that there is currently no info on when the series is set to air, or how many episodes there will eventually be. The BBC boss only said:

It’s just in development right now. But I bumped into Kevin Smith at Sundance and he is beyond himself excited about this, about the show.

Here is a rundown of the SAM & TWITCH comic via Wikipedia:

Sam Burke and Maximilian “Twitch” Williams are two fictional NYPD homicide detectives, created by Todd McFarlane. Sam and Twitch were originally featured in McFarlane’s hit comic series Spawn. Due to their popularity, they were later given their own title in 1999, called Sam and Twitch. In their self-titled series, the duo were the protagonists in a dark and gritty New York City, similar in feel to NYPD Blue and possibly served as a precursor to DC Comics’ Gotham Central. The fictional universe of Sam and Twitch is somewhat different from average comics in which costumed heroes are not the norm.

Personally I am really looking forward to this new series. The mixture of BBC America – which put out the amazingly funny and horrific series CRAZYHEAD – Kevin Smith, and Todd McFarlane’s insane storytelling skills should make for one strange, but endlessly entertaining hybrid.

Source: Deadline

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