Mike Mignola says Neil Marshall’s Hellboy movie is more loyal to comics

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

In a different world, I'd like to think that Guillermo del Toro used his Best Director win for THE SHAPE OF WATER at the past weekend's Academy Awards ceremony to finally get the ball rolling on a third HELLBOY movie to complete his trilogy. Obviously that won't be happening, but we are getting another HELLBOY film in the form of an R-rated reboot which will explore a "darker, more gruesome version of Hellboy," and Mike Mignola says that it will be more loyal to the comics than Guillermo del Toro's films were.

The Hellboy creator recently spoke with Entertainment Weekly and explained how his involvement in the new film is different from how he contributed to Guillermo del Toro's HELLBOY movies.

It’s funny, because my involvement has been very different than the Del Toro movies. The difference is I had known Del Toro for six years by the time we did the first movie. Neil I met a couple months before he worked on the movie. It was very different, but I have been involved ever since they said ‘Hey we’re gonna make another Hellboy movie, and we’re gonna do this story.’ I’ve bounced back and forth with them about how to adapt this particular Hellboy story. At various times I’ve jumped in and been much more active in the screenplay than I ever was on the Del Toro movies. But I did nothing so far as design stuff on the movie. Guillermo wanted me as a concept artist, but on this movie, there were other concept artists. I came in and I looked at some stuff, but they were trying to do something so close to what’s on the comics that they really leaned on what had been done by Duncan [Fegredo] and me in the comics.

The upcoming film will be closely based on three Hellboy stories (Darkness Calls, The Wild Hunt, and The Storm and the Fury) which were written by Mike Mignola and illustrated by Duncan Fegredo, and although the first HELLBOY film was also based on a Hellboy story, Mignola said that Guillermo del Toro was looking to reinvent everything. "The first film was based on one of the comics, but Del Toro was looking to reinvent everything. I think the difference is here, the bulk of the Fegredo arc takes place in the real world," Mignola said. "So instead of making up a whole fantasy world, it was, ‘Let’s find locations that feel like these real-world locales that Duncan drew in the comic.’ I think the bulk of the characters in the film are established in the comic. It was insane for me to walk in there and see that someone did a really nice rendering of a creature I created or Duncan created. It’s got a whole different feel from the older movies. Duncan’s not working on it, but I did see stuff in the movie that was so close to what Duncan drew, more so than what was in the previous movies. It was pretty exciting." Although I'm still a little bummed that we won't get to see Guillermo del Toro complete his trilogy, I am growing more and more curious about the reboot. Fingers crossed.

HELLBOY is set for a January 11, 2019 release.