We’ll take emotion out of this announcement for now and just focus on the facts: A new HELLBOY movie is in the works, but it won’t be with Guillermo del Toro or Ron Perlman’s involvement.
Instead, Millennium Films is in negotiations with lauded genre filmmaker Neil Marshall (THE DESCENT, DOOMSDAY, Game of Thrones) to take the reins on the movie, which would officially be a reboot. The working title is HELLBOY: RISE OF THE BLOOD QUEEN, and the script has evidently already been written by Andrew Cosby, Christopher Golden and Hellboy creator Mike Mignola.
Being eyed to play Big Red himself is David Harbour, who currently stars in Netflix’s Stranger Things as Sheriff Hopper. Both Harbour and Marshall are “in talks,” so don’t enter their names on IMDb just yet.
This will be bittersweet news for fans of the HELLBOY films. Naturally, any chance to see the heroic demon’s antics on the big screen is welcome, but it’s pretty hard to envision one sans del Toro’s fantastical vision or Perlman’s quintessential performance. And that’s after only two movies. Earlier this year, del Toro attempted to get the principle parties together to work out a deal for HELLBOY 3, but things did not work out. It’s looking like the producers in control of the character decided to go with a reboot, which will likely be more cost-effective, as opposed to a third film with del Toro at the helm, which would probably have been fairly expensive.
Regardless of cost, if these deals go through, Marshall and Harbour (pictured below) surely have their work cut out for them. More on this as it develops.