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Hellboy fans may be shocked to hear the latest update regarding a potential sequel in the works with Guillermo del Toro.
The franchise – which stars Ron Perlman as the titular red-horned hero – is an adaptation of Mike Mignola’s original comic book series.
It has earned a legion of fans thanks to the 2004 original Hellboy, which won three Oscars, and 2008’s The Golden Army. Both films were directed by del Toro.
The franchise continued in 2019 with Hellboy, which began life as a sequel to The Golden Army, but ended up as a reboot after del Toro was not offered the full writer-director role he had been given on the previous two films. Perlman refused to return without the Spanish director’s involvement.
Instead Stranger Things star David Harbour stepped into the role, and the film received terrible reviews – garnering a low rating of 17 per cent on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes.
Since then, fans have been eager for a del Toro-directed sequel to Golden Army – but they will be disappointed to hear that one is unlikely to happen, according to Mignola.
During a recent interview with Screen Rant, Mignola bluntly suggested that Hellboy 3 is probably off the cards because he and del Toro have “moved on in different directions”.
“Being able to look back now, I’m very happy about the time I spent with him,” he said of the Pan’s Labyrinth director.
“We had some adventures, and I just think we’ve both moved on in different directions.
“When you work on movies, especially if you’re on the movie set, there’s so much intensity day in, day out with these people – with the actors, with the director – and then when it’s over, it’s just over.”
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He continued to express his sadness over losing touch with del Toro despite having felt a close affinity with him.
“It’s a very strange feeling [where] you just go, ‘I thought we were friends for life, but I’ll never actually see you again,’ and, unfortunately, I think that’s kind of where del Toro and I are,” he said.
“He’s just on another planet. I’m very glad I got to know him and work with him back when working on a movie was five or six guys, and not the career he has now. But we still speak or email occasionally.”
Elsewhere in the interview, he added: “I just think there was a period where we intersected, and then we both kept going in our own directions. I think we certainly appreciate what the other guy is doing.”
Mignola is due to release a documentary titled Mike Mignola: Drawing Monsters, which sheds some light on the “clash” he and del Toro had on the set of The Golden Army.
“In the documentary – and I’m very glad we did this – you do see our clash, and then there’s just enough in the documentary to say, ‘Yeah, but they don’t hate each other still,’” he said.
As well as fans, Perlman may also be disappointed to hear the news. The actor has previously expressed his desire to complete the original film’s trilogy plans for the fans.
In a 2022 interview with The Independent, when del Toro and he had both publicly announced they were planning a third film, he said: “Am I eager to do Hellboy 3? No, I’m 71 f***ing years old. We owe this to the fans and we should give it to them because it would be an epic conclusion. So Guillermo, if you’re reading, I’m not done pounding you to get this f***ing thing done.”
