The red demonic hero and Guillermo del Toro's famed film franchise "Hellboy" will soon be back on the big screen. However, the red hero with cut horns will return without its original director at the wheel. There have been changes but fans are still excited to see their favorite hero in action once again.
The new movie
The film franchise’s return on the big screen will now have Neil Marshall as the director (“The Descent” and “Game of Thrones”) and the red-skinned devil role will go to David Harbour (“Stranger Things”). Producers Larry Gordon and Lloyd Levin have been negotiating with Millennium for a film installment of “Hellboy” that would reboot and relaunch the franchise, along with the producer from Dark Horse Entertainment, Mike Richardson.
The movie has a working title “Hellboy: Rise of the Blood Queen,” written by the creator himself, Mike Mignola together with Christopher Golden and Andrew Cosby. If the negotiation will turn out to be a deal, then it will make Millennium the third company with the most number of releases for “Hellboy” movie.
From comics to big screen
Mignola first created “Hellboy” as an indie comic in 1993 and the story about a demon who was raised by a professor became a hit. The character is working at the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, an organization that fights evildoers with supernatural abilities. Since then, the character has a wider context existence.
This is due to the mythology that was intelligently created by Mignola.
Whether it could be the time preceding or succeeding, it has opened various reality and through this, things can be deviated further from what we just know. The first adaptation was co-written by del Toro under Revolution Studios and released in 2004 by Sony.
That time, international box-office performance of a film is not widespread but somehow it was able to make $40 million outside the US and $60 million in its home country, however, the entire production cost $66 million.
The next “Hellboy” movie was made by the same director and actor but it was under Universal. The expected hit did not come along the way when “The Dark Knight” was released six days later. Nonetheless, both of the movies produced its own followers that eventually resulted to some indications of another installment.
In 2016, Levin and Gordon, who controls the rights, together with del Toro and Dark House Entertainment tried to materialize the third installment but there is one thing hindering them, the budget for a bigger production that del Toro was aiming for.
Pondering over del Toro’s enormous vision, the producers settled for what is more feasible, a reboot and relaunch. Neil Marshall and writer Aron Coleite (“Heroes” and “Star Trek: Discovery” series) are now working on a new script. Marshall will also co-produce "Hellboy" with Marc Helwig. The executive producers are Christa Campbell, Lati Grobman and Carl Hampe.
