It’s not the most outlandish statement in the world to suggest that if you asked 100 people if the Hellboy franchise should have been carried on without Guillermo del Toro and Ron Perlman leading the charge, the majority of them would answer with a resounding “no.”
Instead, the reboot that nobody was asking for partnered Neil Marshall with David Harbour, and ended up being panned six feet into the ground by both critics, casual audiences, and fans of the source material, all while dying a miserable death at the box office that saw the leading man make a promise to keep his ego in check from then on out.
Naturally, then, a reboot nobody asked for to the reboot nobody asked for took shape, with Jack Kesy inheriting the role of Big Red in the upcoming do-over hailing from Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance director Brian Taylor, which is being distributed by a company you’ve probably never heard of.
At this stage, it would be a lot more surprising if Hellboy: The Crooked Man was anything other but an entirely unnecessary flop, but producer Les Weldon revealed to Collider that the casting process was a lot more philosophical in nature than you might think.
“We went on a long soul-searching expedition to find the right Hellboy, and we knew that this Hellboy was gonna be a very moody, very kind of dark and creepy movie. There’s no gloss, nothing like that. And Jack, look, I had worked with Jack before, as had other guys in our company, and we sort of came to the same conclusion that that sort of personality he has was gonna work really nicely for that film.”
The Crooked Man is slated for release next year, and as much as we’d love to be wrong and see it go toe-to-toe with del Toro and Perlman’s duology as top-tier comic book adaptations, you’d best not hold your breath.