The Hellboy reboot isn't even in production, yet we've spent a lot of time talking about it over the last several weeks. This namely has to do with the fact that people have been waiting for another Hellboy movie for years, but most people hoped that movie would be a third Guillermo del Toro film and not a remake with a new cast. Now, comics creator Mike Mignola has revealed exactly why the franchise ultimately has opted to do a remake, and his answer may surprise you. He said:
So, we originally started trying to tie it to the del Toro universe and continue those movies. But once we had Neil Marshall, we thought, 'Why are we going to try and continue that universe?' Because a del Toro movie is a del Toro movie, and you don't want to try and hand a del Toro movie to someone else. Especially someone as great as Neil Marshall. So that's when it went from being this continuation to being a reboot.
I'm not sure anyone even knew the idea of a continuation into Hellboy 3 was originally being bandied about before Mike Mignola and the gang decided to go in another direction. What's clear, however, is that there was never any intention of bringing back Guillermo del Toro for a third round. Once Neil Marshall was on board, plans started falling into place that will allow the Game of Thrones director to go in his own direction.
Mike Mignola, for one, doesn't see this as a negative, telling Nerdist that he's excited to see where the Hellboy remake takes the comic character he created.
It's exciting to have another director. It's exciting to take another path, to take that material and give it another leaning.
Right now the Hellboy reboot is starting to come together. Stranger Things actor David Harbour has signed on as the new Hellboy, and we've heard the movie is going to try for a different tone. Recent reports have also indicated the reboot should be signing with a distributor soon and plans to start filming in the fall. We'll let you know when things start moving forward at an accelerated pace.
There were a lot of differing opinions about the property getting rebooted from cast members to director Guillermo del Toro himself. But David Harbour spent some time with both Ron Perlman and del Toro and everyone seems to be mostly on the same page now. The Hellboy family is back to being one big, happy family at this point, but it'll still be a while before we actually see some footage from the new project. While we wait, check out what other movies are hitting theaters in the near future.
