The Hellboy franchise, originally an adaptation of Mike Mignola's comic book has garnered Hollywood notoriety in the superhero film genre since its 2004 release, and has earned it's own cult following. For the most part, because of Guillermo Del Toro's visually stunning style in filmaking and the actor who plays Hellboy, Ron Perlman, who is a natural in portraying characters under prosthetics (i.e. 1987's Beauty and The Beast series, Island of Dr. Moreau).
But the box office wasn't too keen on Hellboy's effort, with the first and second installments not managing to break even in in domestic sales. For this reason, plans for a third Hellboy has been shelved and most probably won't be making its way to the big screen. Del Toro has since worked with Legendary Pictures on Pacific Rim, with talks of it getting a sequel and even a third film.
Del Toro spoke about the potential of another Hellboy film during a Reddit AMA:
It is a question that I myself ask of the world many times, but we have gone through basically every studio and asked for financing, and they are not interested. I think that the first movie made its budget back, and a little bit of profit, but then it was very very big on video and DVD. The story repeated itself with the second already, it made its money back at the box office, but a small margin of profit in the release of the theatrical print, but was very very big on DVD and video. Sadly now from a business point of view all the studios know is that you don't have that safety net of the DVD and video, so they view the project as dangerous.
Creatively, I would love to make it. Creatively. But it is proven almost impossible to finance. Not from MY side, but from the studio side. If I was a multimillionaire, I would finance it myself, but I spend all my money on rubber monsters.
Though the director himself has confirmed that there aren't any plans for Hellboy 3, Actor Jeffrey Tambor gave fans just the slightest glimmer of hope while promoting his show, Transparent, with an appearance at The Colbert Show:
"There is actually talk of a 'Hellboy 3,' but they better hurry or I'm going to be in a walker."
It seems that Hellboy 3 isn't a lost cause after all. Fans and moviegoers will just have to wait a little more to see "Big Red" back on the big screen.
Stay tuned to The Franchise Herald for more news and updates on Hellboy 3.
