It's funny how we humans can sometimes talk ourselves into things. For instance, a lot of people have convinced themselves that Superman Returns is a flop, even though it's already broken even. Or take Hellboy. Good movie, low theater attendance. There's a movie that actually wasn't able to manage a profit. Yet fans, some of them prominent film commentators, convinced themselves that the movie was a success. Worse, they talked themselves into believing there'd be another.

It's one thing for Whedonites to lie to themselves, it's something else entirely when journalists crawl up a director's bung and then subvert the public trust as a means to promote a friend's work as something it most certainly is not. In this case, a lot of Del Toro's friends in the online journalism community were busy promoting Hellboy as a success… when in fact it was a flop.

Luckily, we can finally shut the door on all that crap. Hellboy 2 is even closer to being officially dead dead dead. Despite what you may have been told on other sites, there won't be a sequel and there never was going to be one no matter how badly director Guillermo Del Toro and his internet buddies/promotion team might want it. A few weeks ago the movie was dropped by Sony Revolutions after they realized they like movies that make them money. Fans tried to justify its homeless state by touting some crazy rumor that Paramount was picking it up. Paramount, the studio that can't get a Watchmen movie made let alone a sequel to something that's already unprofitable. Paramount, the company that killed Star Trek and now makes its money off selling the star power of Tom Cruise.

Even Guillermo Del Toro is about to just give the whole Hellboy thing up.

Empire Online heard from Guillermo during a panel at Comic Con, where he talked about what movie he'll do next. Guillermo, who’s on the verge of finishing Pan's Labyrinth doesn't seem to know where to go. He says he's become pretty pessimistic at the chances of Hellboy 2 getting made any time soon, and is now moving towards At the Mouth of Madness instead.

At the Mouth of Madness is a Warner Bros. project, and Del Toro is already out scouting locations for it. The film is an adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft novel, the story of an Antarctic expedition which stumbles on an ancient and frightening civilization.

Empire also hints that there's another, secret movie under consideration for Guillermo's next gig, but they're not telling what it is. At one point Del Toro was in consideration to direct Halo, a videogame adaptation yes, but also probably a good fit. He turned it down to pursue his futile obsession of Hellboy 2, but with Halo taking it's time to move towards production, it's not entirely impossible that he could be back in talks for that.