Mike Mignola’s Hellboy is one of the best independent comic book characters ever created, but it has struggled on the road to becoming a live-action film franchise. Guillermo Del Toro’s films with Ron Perlman are cult classics, but neither of them made enough money to be considered profitable. Meanwhile, the 2019 version of Hellboy with David Harbour is a film that the actor considers to be his own personal Green Lantern. The fact that it only brought in $55 million at the global box office against a $50 million budget only serves to back that up.
So, even though it hasn’t been done successfully, there’s still enough goodwill in the brand for at least one studio to want to give it another go. According to DiscussingFilm, that studio is Millenium Media and they are all in on the idea of a Hellboy Reboot.
To helm the film, they’ve tapped Brian Taylor, who first came to popularity with his frenetic and fun film, Crank starring Jason Statham. He also served as the showrunner on the great but underappreciated Syfy series, Happy. While that movie was a blast, he’s also the person who co-wrote the Johan Hex movie, and directed lackluster efforts like Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengence, Gamer, and Crank: High Voltage. We know that Mignola will also be getting a story credit on the film, but that doesn’t mean he has any involvement in it. It could just be because he created Hellboy.
As far as the story, goes, sources are reporting that the new film will be based on the 2011 mini-series Hellboy: The Crooked Man. If that’s the case we could be looking at a period piece set in the mid 1950s. In Crooked Man, Hellboy “encounters Tom, a man who in his youth sold his soul to a backwoods demon known as the Crooked Man. Together, they travel back into the dark heart of the Appalachian mountains to confront the demon and see if Tom’s soul can be saved.”
If this is true, it could be exactly what Hellboy needs right now. This is a small story with a lot of chance to focus on character and not have to worry so much about getting lost in apocalyptic spectacle.