It’s fair to say when it was first announced that the Hellboy franchise was to be rebooted and director Guillermo del Toro and star Ron Perlman would never get to make their much-touted third movie, fans of the Dark Horse comics character were not pleased. However, the more we’ve learned about the project the more people’s opinions of it have turned around.
For one, what the new Hellboy promises to do is take the Right Hand of Darkness back to its roots and produce an R-rated horror movie rather than a crowd-pleasing superhero flick. While speaking to Variety at this weekend’s NYCC, star David Harbour explained how the film’s different at its core from the usual comic book movie fare.
“There’s this dark, kind of horror-y, monster element to [the Hellboy reboot]… I think that’s really at its core in a different way a little bit than a superhero movie.”
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard something along these lines. Hellboy creator Mike Mignola has previously explained that he was impressed with the vision of director Neil Marshall for downplaying the superhero elements of the story while still remaining faithful to the source material.
While they definitely had a supernatural and spooky flavor to them, del Toro’s previous movies also had to straddle the line between being accessible to superhero-loving kids as well as allowing the visionary filmmaker to do his thing. Perlman’s Hellboy, in particular, had his rough edges but was mostly a nice guy that you’d love to have a drink with. Going by what we’ve seen of Harbour’s version, though, you probably wouldn’t want to grab a beer with him.
The first trailer for Hellboy was shown to the crowd at NYCC this past weekend and those who saw it were left mighty impressed with the footage. It doesn’t seem that Lionsgate are ready to make it public just yet, but hopefully it’ll be summoned up from the underworld for the rest of us to enjoy sooner rather than later.
