Alright. I can't be the only one who, upon looking at this new image of Hellboy, immediately thought of the song "Business Time" by Flight of the Conchords. For real. Take a look at the image for yourself below, and then tell me that Big Red doesn't look like he's determined to beat some ass. When scanning the image – which comes to us courtesy of Empire's upcoming ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL issue – we can see that David Harbour's Hellboy is battle-scarred and looking to put some hurt on whatever beast has dared to slither from the shadows.
It's all a part of director Neil Marshall's upcoming HELLBOY reboot starring STRANGER THINGS alum David Harbour, Milla Jovovich (THE FIFTH ELEMENT, MONSTER HUNTER), Ian McShane (DEADWOOD, AMEICAN GODS), Sasha Lane (AMERICAN HONEY), Thomas Haden Church (SIDEWAYS, EASY A), Penelope Mitchell (HEMLOCK GROVE, CURVE), Daniel Dae Kim (LOST, HAWAII FIVE-O) and Sophie Okonedo (AEON FLUX, DIRTY PRETTY THINGS), among others.
In talking about the R-rated nature of the upcoming and highly-anticipated comic book fantasy action film, Marshall told Empire that, “It was always a case of, ‘When in doubt, go back to the source material.’ Some of the stuff is pretty sick." He then added, "More violent and more bloody. We weren’t making it with handcuffs on.”
The above comment is bound to please fans of Mike Mignola's long-running Hellboy comic book series, as the famed creator's run of the character has resulted in Big Red traveling to some of the strangest and darkest places on the planet, alongside his trusty team of B.P.R.D. operatives. The comic book series is also quite violent, as many of the horrors set upon Hellboy never go down without a fight, resulting in buckets of blood, guts, and entrails strewn about the battlefield.
When talking about why his team chose to reboot the HELLBOY universe, rather than pick up where filmmaker Guillermo del Toro's HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY left off, Mignola told Empire, "We went back and forth on that," he said. "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 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."
Are you prepared for a more violent and bloody depiction of Hellboy up on the big screen? Of course you are. After all, fans have been asking for something like this for years, and I'll be damned if Harbour and Marshall don't sound as if they're prepared to deliver the goods.
HELLBOY is scheduled for an April 12, 2019 release. Here's hoping that we get treated to a trailer sometime soon, as I'm sure that all of us can't wait to see Harbour's Big Red in action.