Last year’s “Hellboy” reboot was frankly a disaster on many levels, but long before it released there was already a large backlash against it by much of the audience it was trying to cater for.
Why? Because fans understandably felt the property didn’t need a reboot and they would rather have seen fanboy favorite and Oscar winner Guillermo del Toro remain at the helm and ‘complete his trilogy’.
“Stranger Things” actor David Harbour, who played Hellboy in the film, said on Instagram (via Screen Rant) recently that the expectations and immediate shutting out by del Toro loyalists before they began production effectively cut the project off at its knees:
“I think it failed before we began shooting because I think that people didn’t want us to make the movie and for some reason there was like a big… Guillermo del Toro and Ron Perlman created this iconic thing that we thought could be reinvented and then they certainly – the loudness of the internet was like, ‘We do not want you to touch this.’ And then we made a movie that I think is fun and I think had its problems but was a fun movie and then people were just very very against it and that’s people’s right but I learned my lesson in a lot of different way.”
Harbour’s work in the film has been cited as one of its few saving graces, while there have long been reports of behind-the-scenes problems involving the script and creative control of the film’s content. In any case none of the “Hellboy” films to date have been major earners, even the better reviewed ones, so its unlikely we’ll see more of him on the big screen anytime soon.
