As fans might expect from the planned R rating and the involvement of director Neil Marshall, the newly announced Hellboy reboot will be darker, and considerably more bloody, than the previous two films.
Following the surprising (but brief) news delivered Monday by Hellboy creator Mike Mignola, co-screenwriter Andrew Cosby (Eureka) filled in a few more details about the reboot, tentatively titled Hellboy: Rise of the Blood Queen.
“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,” Cosby, who’s writing the script with Mignola and Christopher Golden, told Silver Screen Beat. “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.”
Hellboy fans presumably have Deadpool and Logan to thank for the darker tone, as both films defied box-office expectations for R-rated comic book adaptations.
Cosby went on to discuss the current stage of development, saying, “The script is done, but work will continue as we move forward, always trying to make it the best it can be.”
Stranger Things star David Harbour will play the title role, succeeding fan-favorite actor Ron Perlman, who headlined Guillermo del Toro’s 2004 film Hellboy and its 2008 sequel Hellboy II: The Golden Army, and voiced a pair of animated movies.
The Hellboy reboot has no release date.