Guillermo del Toro on Hellboy reboot and his love of Baby Driver

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Guillermo del Toro kept the flame for a third HELLBOY alive for many years, even organizing a sit-down between Ron Perlman and HELLBOY creator Mike Mignola in a last-ditch effort to see what could be done to revive the franchise. Unfortunately, Guillermo del Toro's dream of HELLBOY 3 died that day and it was later announced that the franchise would be rebooted. While speaking with IndieWire, del Toro related the experience to watching Edgar Wright go through the challenges of developing ANT-MAN for years only to depart the project over creative differences.

When a project dies, you get maybe a day or two of headlines, then the world moves on. As a filmmaker, when you sever your ties with a project, you’re leaving behind at least two years of history and at least two years of pain. You’ve gone through storyboards, production schedules — you’re in the middle of a painting when someone or something burned the canvas. Watching Edgar go through that [with ANT-MAN], and having him use ‘Baby Driver’ to heal — I wanted to talk about that because it’s important.

Guillermo del Toro has had nothing but praise for Edgar Wright's BABY DRIVER, calling it "breathtaking," "flawlessly executed," and "a movie in love with cinema." When it comes to the reboot of HELLBOY, which will fall under the direction of Neil Marshall (THE DESCENT) and star David Harbour in the title role, del Toro says that he feels no ill will towards Mike Mignola for moving ahead with the reboot.

I think I was probably overenthusiastic and not exactly structured in trying it one final time. Ron [Perlman] and I got very excited about it, but the father of the character is Mike. If he feels he wants to reboot it, that’s perfectly genuine and god bless. As always, I have a very full plate. I’m thankful for that.

Is it just me or is Guillermo del Toro one of the nicest guys around? He comes across so completely genuine and listening to him geek out about movies is an absolute joy. Although a HELLBOY film may not be in his future, del Toro's next film is one which he's very excited about. THE SHAPE OF WATER is an other-worldly fairy tale set against the backdrop of the Cold War era America circa 1963. In the hidden high-security government laboratory where she works, lonely Elisa (Sally Hawkins) is trapped in a life of silence and isolation. Elisa’s life is changed forever when she and co-worker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) discover a secret classified experiment. THE SHAPE OF WATER is set for a December 8, 2017 release, so I'd expect that we'll be seeing the first trailer for the film before too long.