This week saw the news that Neil Marshall’s Hellboy has had an outright disastrous box office run. With the movie raking in a paltry $40m worldwide on a $50m budget, it’s being yanked from cinemas and seems destined to end up forgotten and unloved. Given that the reboot was supposed to revitalize the franchise after the two Guillermo del Toro-directed movies slightly underperformed, you could be forgiven for thinking that the film will be the last we’ll see of Big Red for quite some time – perhaps ever. But dry those hankies, as we’re hearing from our sources that Netflix is planning a new Hellboy TV show.
There are no precise details as yet, but we’ve been told this is set to be another complete reboot (so goodbye David Harbour) and that Netflix wants the show to be bloody and mature. That last bit is slightly worrying as that’s precisely how Lionsgate billed Hellboy, but hopefully this series will be able to recapture the offbeat humor that made the del Toro films such an engaging watch.
Another question that needs to be answered is what form this show will take. While they could opt for live-action, I have a feeling that we might see a CGI animated effort. It’d save on the makeup budget, they can have much more imaginative monsters and the IDT Entertainment animated movies from the mid-2000s were pretty great.
The only other thing I want to add is that even though they’re saying they’re getting a new cast in, could they not at least consider asking Ron Perlman back to play the role? David Harbour was far from the worst thing about the recent movie, but he wasn’t a patch on Perlman. And if it does prove to be an animated series, then Perlman has already voiced Hellboy in animation multiple times. C’mon Netflix, you know it makes sense!