Even if I personally had a whole lot of fun with the movie, there’s no denying that Neil Marshall’s Hellboy was a big time flop, pulling in just $46 million worldwide on a reported $50 million production budget. Yikes. The film, a new take on Mike Mignola’s comic book universe, was also savaged by critics, with a current Rotten Tomatoes score of just 17%. Yikes.
Needless to say, nobody involved is eager to make a sequel. Not now and likely not ever.
“I don’t think there’ll be much of a light,” star David Harbour just told ComicBook.com, stating the obvious. “There’s a lot of people who reach out to me who really loved it and really enjoyed the new take, and were just happy to see him back on the screen, but I know in the culture at large, I don’t think it was very well received.”
Harbour continued, “I don’t think it made a lot of money. I don’t really keep up with those things too much to be honest, but I don’t think the perception was that it was a hit, and so in that way, I don’t know that the risk is worth it. I think the idea is to move on. The producers spoke to me just saying ‘Great job,’ they really liked what I did, but I haven’t heard anything about a sequel, and I’m not hanging my hat on anything like that.”
Maybe now Guillermo del Toro will be handed back the reigns to end his planned trilogy proper, with Ron Perlman back as Big Red? One thing we’ve learned is to *never* say never!
Hellboy hits DVD, Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD on July 23rd.
