There’s a new Hellboy adaptation in the works. This one is titled Hellboy: The Crooked Man and will be directed by Brian Taylor, the person behind the Brave New World adaptation that ran for one season on Peacock before getting canceled.
According to Taylor, this Hellboy won’t be like Hellboy projects before it. Collider sat down with the writer-director and got some details on the feature, which is set to start filming in April.
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“So first of all, I love the character of Hellboy and my favorite run of the character is this particular era. The [Guillermo Del Toro] movies were massive scale space operas and just pure Del Toro through and through,” Taylor said. “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 … 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.”
What will a “real reset” of Hellboy look like? Or, to ask another question: Do we really need another Hellboy adaptation to begin with? The answer to the first question, as Taylor explained above, is that this Hellboy will focus on the run by Mignola, which features a different, younger Hellboy. The good news for those who liked his run is that Mignola co-wrote the script with his partner, Christopher Golden, and Taylor.
We have a few more details about the project from Collider, including that the reboot will be R-rated and will have three leads. Taylor also had this to say about the feature:
“I want fans to know that we’re coming at this film, from a place of love for the original material, and for the character, for Mike’s character. We’re not trying to reinvent some completely different idea of Hellboy—we’re trying to get back to the feeling of these particular books from the mid-aughts. It’s something that hasn’t been seen on screen before, but it’s a version I think hardcore Hellboy fans will want to see. Anyway, I do.”
No news yet on casting or when the movie will make its way to a screen near you.
