Over the weekend, news broke that an all-new Hellboy movie is headed our way via Millenium Pictures, director Brian Taylor (of Neveldine & Taylor fame), and Hellboy creator Mike Mignola, who co-wrote the film’s screenplay alongside award-winning novelist Christopher Golden.
This news was quickly followed by a new interview with Taylor over at Collider, who offered some further details about what we can expect from Big Red’s latest onscreen adventure. Says Taylor:
“So first of all, I love the character of Hellboy and my favorite run of the character is this particular era. The GDT movies were massive scale space operas and just pure Del Toro through and through. But some of the comics Mike (Mignola) was doing at the time had a very different feeling. More lean and mean, creepy folk horror. A younger Hellboy, wandering the dark corners of the world… Paranormal investigator, night stalker…
What does that mean in practice? Going back to one of Mignola’s earlier storylines, The Crooked Man, which took place decades in the past in a very particular part of the country.
The Crooked Man in particular is just such an iconic book—written by Mike, drawn by Richard Corben, another legend. Set in the late ’50s. For me it’s my favorite version of the character. So the appeal of this one to me, is to go back to that and do a real reset, and really give us that version of Hellboy, which I just don’t think we’ve seen yet.”
But, wait – there’s more! In addition to being based on one of Hellboy‘s more intriguing storylines and sticking with its folk horror feel, Taylor also says the film is being planned as a no-punches-pulled, R-rated feature:
“We’ve definitely had a discussion of, you know, it doesn’t really serve anybody to make something R for R’s sake. To say it has to be R so we have to add A, B and C. But this material, this original material is dark and scary and violent and adult. So in order to really embrace that, we just don’t wanna have any handcuffs on.”
This all sounds great to us! Hellboy‘s onscreen history has had its up and downs over the years (we’d still kill to see Guillermo del Toro finish off his trilogy, but that seems guaranteed not to happen at this point), but we’re never gonna turn our noses up at a new Hellboy movie. We’re particularly interested to see how Taylor handles a folk horror film, and what other sensibilities he might be bringing to the production. If nothing else, the results oughtta be interesting!
As of this writing, there’s nothing further to report on Hellboy: The Crooked Man, but considering how excited Millenium seems about the project, we’re guessing that a bit of casting news can’t be too far into the future. Stay tuned for that whenever it drops! In the meantime, head on over to Collider to read the rest of their chat with Taylor, and maybe revisit the Hellboy movies to get prepped for the new one. Couldn’t hurt!
