It was recently confirmed that a new live-action Hellboy movie is in the works titled, Hellboy: The Crooked Man, with cameras expected to begin rolling within the next couple of months in Bulgaria.
Brian Taylor (Crank, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance) will direct what's being described as a movie that expands Hellboy’s world through one of the most beloved issues of the comic series. Hellboy's creator, Mike Mignola, meanwhile, has penned the screenplay alongside his Dark Horse Comics collaborator Chris Golden, so it's a project that definitely has potential.
Recently, Collider spoke with Taylor about his plans for the franchise and why he wanted to adapt The Crooked Man.
After praising Guillermo del Toro's vision, he'd add that the Mignola comics he's a fan of are from the era The Crooked Man was released, and this movie "[will] go back to that and do a real reset, and really give us that version of [a younger Hellboy, wandering the dark corners of the world...paranormal investigator, night stalker] which I just don't think we've seen yet."
Taylor has also worked on the script and while it won't be a direct translation of the comics, the goal is to honour them and bring what we've seen on the page to life. That required an R-Rating.
"I pitched an R-rated folk horror movie and the team here at Millennium have been nothing but supportive," he explains. "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."
Declining to give too many story details away, Taylor confirmed his Hellboy reboot will have three leads, noting that those will be the big man himself alongside Tom Ferrell and a new character created by Mignola who replaces Cora.
As for casting, that's underway. "I'm as excited to learn that news as anybody else is," he teases. "But we've got some amazing actors who are in the mix and the goal is to break out a younger version of Hellboy."
The filmmaker would conclude by saying, "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."
We're definitely excited to see how Hellboy: The Crooked Man comes together, even after the disappointing 2019 reboot starring David Harbour. Taylor certainly seems to have a solid idea of how best to approach the material, anyway, and we're clearly going to get more news on the movie imminently.