Mike Mignola on the darker, more horror driven vision of the new Hellboy

Although I'm still mourning the loss of Guillermo del Toro's third HELLBOY movie, I am certainly beginning to get pumped for the upcoming reboot which finds Strangers Things' David Harbour stepping into the title role. We'll likely get a much better look at HELLBOY during tomorrow's panel at New York Comic-Con, at which Hellboy creator Mike Mignola will be present. Mignola recently spoke with Deadline about the upcoming film, and said that they initially went back and forth between continuing the story which Guillermo del Toro had set up or making a clean break for new director Neil Marshall.

We went back and forth on that. Early on there was some idea of continuing the storyline that del Toro had started but would that be fair to a new director? So we decided to just start over. Neil is a horror director so the idea then was to a make a darker film. If you are going to use a guy, let him do what he does best. So we went through the script taking out the del Toro-isms and in some ways go out of our way to make sure we are doing a different Hellboy with its own distinct character [as a project] but still adhering to the comics.

Mike Mignola added that both Neil Marshall and Guillermo del Toro took the same material and led it in very different directions, with del Toro doing a "more fanciful version of Hellboy" and Marshall going for a "darker, more horror version of Hellboy." Mignola also addresses the title of the film, admitting that he was initially surprised that they didn't elect to include a subtitle. "Honestly, I was a little surprised that they didn’t give it a subtitle," Mignola said. "They would like this to be the first of many new Hellboy movies and if they had a subtitle it might make it a little confusing. Is it a sequel like the second del Toro film [Hellboy II: The Golden Army from 2008]? I suspect calling this one just Hellboy sends the message that this is the first one in a new series of movies."

Mike Mignola was also able to spend several days on the set of the film, which provided the Hellboy creator with a rare experience.

This is the first time I have been able to say honestly that I was on set and looking at something that looked like it jumped straight out of the comic. I never had that experience on any of the other stuff. There’s one scene in this movie where I was like, ‘Holy f*ck,’ that’s pretty damn close — in the costumes and everything else — to a specific scene in the comics. That was a new experience.

In addition to David Harbour, HELLBOY also stars Ian McShane as Professor Trevor Bruttenholm, Sasha Lane as Alice Monaghan, Daniel Dae Kim as Ben Daimio, and Milla Jovovich as Nimue, the Blood Queen. HELLBOY will hit theaters on April 12, 2019.