One fleeting glimpse into the We Got This Covered archives for Hellboy 3 will reveal that, over the years, the supernatural threequel has ignited a passionate following around Ron Perlman’s commitment to the role. But despite brief flares of progress, the project has never taken that defining step out of development Hell and into production.
Having already ruled out the possiblity of turning to Kickstarter as an alternative, Perlman – who toplined both Hellboy and its sequel The Golden Army as the cigar-chomping demon Big Red – has now conceded that a potential Hellboy 3 is unlikely to ever materialize. Quizzed about the long-gestating film by Variety at the Guadalajara Festival in Mexico, the actor revealed that “[Hellboy 3] probably will never happen, though you never say never.”
As much as we’d like to believe otherwise, the possibility of Hellboy 3 securing the backing of a studio has steadily faded away since mid-2015 when Perlman galvanized the fanbase via Twitter. With that said, Pacific Rim 2 – another of Guillermo del Toro’s on-again, off-again productions – was recently handed a lifeline over at Legendary Pictures, who instated former Daredevil showrunner Steven S. DeKnight at the helm to direct.
Could we be seeing a Hellboy sequel without del Toro in the director’s chair? Unlikely. After all, the director has admitted in the past that part and parcel of the film’s struggles are budgetary related, given that it’s tethered with a proposed production budget north of $120 million. That’s a hard sell even with the Mexican filmmaker on board, though his own busy slate has resulted in Big Red and Co. falling on the back-burner.
Alas, Ron Perlman has long been the biggest advocate of Hellboy 3, so this most recent update on the sequel doesn’t exactly bode well. Outside of the dormant supernatural franchise, the actor can next be seen in Amazon’s Hand of God season 2.