“Hellboy” creator Mike Mignola is claiming the upcoming “Hellboy: The Crooked Man” will be the best film adaptation yet of his work.
Earlier this year, Millennium Media announced plans for a new take on the character with Jack Kesy in the title role. The comic, created in 1993, has yielded three film adaptations to date with Guillermo del Toro’s two films in 2004 and 2008 starring Ron Perlman, and Neil Marshall’s 2019 reboot starring David Harbour.
Brian Taylor is directing the new film which has more of a horror vibe and a stripped-down, simpler story than its predecessors as it directly adapts one of the more self-contained stories with a folk-horror tone.
That marks a change as Del Toro’s films were more universe-ending fantasy epics whilst Marshall’s was a grungy action feature. Set in 1950s rural Appalachia, this latest film will see a younger Hellboy come up against a local devil who turns out to be a resurrected Civil War profiteer.
Mignola co-wrote the screenplay with Chris Golden whilst Taylor has since done some polishing on that. Speaking with Variety, Mignola says:
“His [Brian Taylor’s] intention is to make a horror movie, so that’ll be nice. That’ll be interesting. I read the new draft of the screenplay yesterday, and yes, it is definitely R. It’s the first Hellboy script that I read and I went, ‘Oh, it’s a horror movie,’ which is what I wanted. Taylor does not have a reputation as a horror movie director. But, so far, we’ve had two horror movie directors make Hellboy movies and we’ve never gotten a horror movie.
For years, we’ve been saying, if you’re going to make a Hellboy movie, make it small. And the perfect story to do that with is my personal favorite, ‘The Crooked Man.’ I think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever written. It’s beautifully illustrated by Richard Corben, and it’s a solid story that doesn’t involve a million different characters.
Everybody actually agreed from the very beginning, ‘Yes, we want to do that one.’ Budget-wise, it’s good because it’s a lower-budget kind of a story. It’s not the Hellboy origin. It’s not Hellboy saving the world. It’s not huge. It’s a subtle, dark, little folk horror story.”
Production on the new “Hellboy” is slated to begin shortly in Bulgaria. About the 2019 film, Marshall says he thought David Harbour was terrific in the role, but “there was a lot of stuff wrong with that movie”.
