With the recent announcement that although Hellboy will not get a third film with Ron Perlman and Selma Blair, the franchise is getting a complete overhaul. The studio is straying from Guillermo del Toro’s dark fantasy vision, and aiming for an R-rated reboot. This news broke last week, but it appears that the film already has a script, and will begin production soon.
Neil Marshall will direct the film, with David Harbour (Stranger Things) set be Hellboy. Larry Gordon and Lloyd Levin are in negotiations with Millennium Films to produce. The script was written by Hellboy creator Mike Mignola, Andrew Cosby and Christopher Golden.
In a recent interview with Silver Screen Beat, co-writer Cosby says that the film is titled Hellboy: Rise of the Blood Queen, and the script is finished. He goes on to say that this version of Hellboy is darker than anything you have seen before. The direction of the script is closer to Mike Mignola’s original comic.:
“I can’t really talk about specifics with regard to the story, which they’re keeping a pretty tight lid on at the moment, but I can say that this is a darker, more gruesome version of Hellboy. Neil said from the very beginning that he wanted to walk a razor’s edge between horror and comic book movie, which was music to my ears because that’s what I was shooting for in the script, and precisely what Mignola does so well with the comics.
Honestly, everyone has just been working overtime to bring that Mignola magic to the big screen. The script is done, but work will continue as we move forward, always trying to make it the best it can be.”
Bringing more of the horror elements into the film will definitely make the new films stand out from their predecessors. The bigger question here, is whether or not it is too soon to reboot the franchise? del Toro’s vision was wondrous and beautiful, but the new direction could bring edginess that the franchise hasn’t seen yet.
Are you excited for a new Hellboy film, and do you like the casting of David Harbour? Let us know in the comments below!
[display-posts posts_per_page=”5″ orderby=”title”]
