Looking back, the Hellboy comic book series was always a perfect match for Guillermo del Toro. The director, who went on to make Pacific Rim and the Oscar-winning The Shape of Water, has a penchant for injecting humanity into his monsters, and even if he looks like Satan on steroids, Ron Perlman’s take on the titular character was vivacious as he was tragic. That makes it all the more saddening that the director’s intended trilogy was never completed in any form.
Now that there’s officially no chance of ever seeing it hit the big screen, creator Mike Mignola revealed that del Toro once pitched him his Hellboy 3 idea as a limited comic book series, but he had to shoot the prospect down.
“I think del Toro mentioned it to me once, and I said no. I think, let the comics be the comics. Comics are confusing enough for people. Let’s not have two different versions of the Hellboy comic out there. My vote would be (to say) no.”
Mignola’s concerns are understandable, but that doesn’t make the news any less of a shame to hear. Fans spent the better part of a decade waiting for del Toro to return back to this franchise, so it would’ve been nice to have some sort of closure, even in comic book form. Yet, larger publishers like Marvel and DC have become overly complicated messes of various multiverses and continuities, which is something Mignola doesn’t seem interested in at all.
After making two incredibly well received films, del Toro seemed dead set on bringing another Hellboy to the big screen, announcing he had a story for the third film all mapped out. For a very short while, it looked like the director would be returning to the world of Brother Red for one last ride, but after a meeting with Perlman and Mignola resulted in a standstill, the movie was abandoned in favor for this year’s critically-panned reboot.
Now, after that effort’s disastrous run in theaters, it’s looking more and more likely that Hellboy’s next home will be a streaming series on Netflix. Considering most the cast of the earlier series has already lent their voice to two straight-to-DVD animated films, would it be too much to hope to bring them back for a proper send off via the streaming company? We’ll just have to wait and see.