UPDATED: According to , Millennium Films is in negotiations to take on the project and the film bears a script written by Andrew Cosby, Christopher Golden, and Mike Mignola. The working title? Hellboy: Rise of the Blood Queen.
Project announcements can often surprise, but few can downright shock you. Today, I consider myself shocked. Mike Mignola, the creator of Hellboy and various other comics, has made a . Hellboy is being rebooted on the big screen. That will come as a blow to fans of the two films made by writer/director Guillermo Del Toro and star Ron Perlman, but just hold your dissent for a moment. The devil, as they as, is in the details. Not only with this reboot be R-rated, but it will star “Stranger Things” actor David Harbour in the titular role. Furthermore, the film will be directed by none other than Neil Marshall (The Descent, Doomsday)!
I am a BIG fan of Del Toro’s two existing Hellboy films. I very much wanted a third, although I never expected one to come to fruition. For better or worse, money speaks louder than quality in Hollywood and those two films just did not do well. As a result, chances for a third film materializing were slim and then earlier this year, they were taken out back and shot.
At the time, Mignola stated that he wouldn’t rule out another Hellboy adaptation on down the line. Most, myself included, assumed that such a project was a long way off. Apparently not. While there is definitely something to be said about this film coming along so soon after the death of Hellboy 3, that’s a subject for another day.
So how soon should we expect this to happen? That’s unfortunately unclear right now. There are rumors that it could shoot late this year or early next, but that remains to be seen. We have little clue as to how far along a script for it has progressed and there’s no telling what Marshall’s or Harbour’s schedules look like. The former is knee-deep in production on his reboot of “Lost in Space” for Netflix at the moment. The latter is a working actor who likes to keep busy and also has a hit TV series (the aforementioned “Stranger Things“) to work around as well.
As for Del Toro, I’m sure he’s hurting a bit from this turn of events, but he has his own projects to keep him busy. The man is currently in post-production on his latest film, The Shape of Water, which is due out this December. He also has numerous projects to juggle as a producer (Pacific Rim: Uprising, “Trollhunters“, “The Strain“, a video game, etc.), so he’s not lacking for material to occupy his time. He’s doing just fine.
Bottom line? This came as a big surprise today, both as a fan of the property, a fan of Del Toro’s take on it, and as a fan of Neil Marshall’s own body of work. Still, in the midst of the whirlwind of emotions that this revelation has brought up, I couldn’t be more excited to see what Mignola, Marshall, and Harbour conjure up for Hellboy going forward.
