Nearly three months after director Guillermo del Toro said a third Hellboy film — a second sequel to his 2004 comic book adaptation — wouldn’t be happening, Millennium Films made a surprising announcement regarding the friendly demon who helps the government pursue paranormal threats. There will be a reboot.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, producers Larry Gordon and Lloyd Levin — who produced the original Hellboy films — is negotiating with Millennium to develop a relaunch of the Hellboy film series that won’t involve del Toro or Ron Perlman, who starred as the title character. Neil Marshall (The Descent) is already attached to the project as director and David Harbour (Stranger Things) is set to don the horns and paint himself red as Hellboy.

The working title of the film is Hellboy: Rise of the Blood Queen, which already has a completed script by Andrew Cosby, Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola. Mignola is the creator of Hellboy, first publishing a story with the character through Dark Horse Comics in 1994. He made the initial announcement for the film on his social media pages. Golden has teamed with Mignola on three Hellboy novels and the two collaborated on a recurring graphic novel series titled Baltimore.

Marshall may not be as revered by film critics and popular with fans as Del Toro, but his filmography indicates the bona fides to make a good Hellboy movie. With The Descent (2005) and Dog Soldiers (2002), he showed a talent for meshing supernatural horror and action. Another of his films, 2008’s Doomsday, in addition to stints directing Game of Thrones, demonstrated that he’s comfortable with larger-scale genre action and adventure.

Harbour (who’s still in talks, according to reports) will likely be a popular choice, unless there’s lingering disappointment over Perlman no longer playing the role. He’s been “that guy” for quite a while, playing supporting character roles in a variety of TV shows and movies, including Black Mass, Suicide Squad, Banshee, and The Newsroom. But his role as Jim Hopper on Stranger Things was something of a breakout for the actor, raising his profile to be considered for bigger leading roles. He was one of the actors considered to play Cable in Deadpool 2 until Josh Brolin was eventually cast in that role.

Maybe most importantly to fans, Harbour is a big dude with the big square jaw that Hellboy has always had in the comic books and movies. He also showed a serious affinity for waffles in the following video, which fits right alongside Hellboy’s love for pancakes.

The fact that a script has been written, a director is attached and a lead actor is about to sign on means that this production has been underway for a while. Maybe pre-production was rolling before del Toro — who co-wrote and directed 2002’s Hellboy and its 2008 sequel, Hellboy II: The Golden Army — announced that there wouldn’t be a Hellboy 3, and that’s what prompted him to drop the hammer on fanboy wishes.

As beloved as Del Toro is among fans, the filmmaker is notorious for attaching himself to far more projects than he can possibly direct himself. (Those movies include the Pacific Rim sequel and Justice League Dark, both of which have moved on with different directors. Del Toro was set to direct The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and got pretty far into that process, but delays forced him to leave the production.) Was he too busy to devote full attention to Hellboy 3, and that’s why no studio was willing to put up the money for it? Or did del Toro have a budget in mind that he wouldn’t back down from, prompting potentially interested studios to walk away?

Perhaps that’s too much speculation, but it’s very curious that a Hellboy movie could be happening without del Toro’s involvement. Hellboy seemed like something of a passion project for the director, albeit one that could be sold to wider audiences, and it’s possible that the first two movies wouldn’t have been made if not for del Toro’s creative vision.

Did Gordon, Levin and Mignola just decide to move on without Del Toro and commission their own script? Was the current script something that del Toro would have worked on had he gotten the greenlight or was there always sort of a reboot contingency, much like Sony did with The Amazing Spider-Man when Spider-Man 4 couldn’t be worked out with Sam Raimi? Does the new Hellboy’s R-rating, specifically mentioned in Mignola’s announcement, play any kind of role in this? The first two Hellboy films were PG-13, but R-rated superhero and comic book movies are more acceptable for film studios now with the success of Deadpool and Logan.

The big question hovering over any of this is whether a Hellboy relaunch can be successful. There didn’t seem to be much clamor for one, other than from diehard fans and Ron Perlman. What is the point of doing one, other than trying to capitalize on a brand name that holds some popularity (maybe more than cult appeal) and giving a studio a comic book property to produce? The first Hellboy made $59 million domestically against a $66 million budget, which would be viewed as a failure. However, the movie eventually generated $99 million worldwide, which was enough to justify a sequel. Yet Hellboy II was viewed as a flop, drawing $75 million at the U.S. box office against an $88 million budget and cut off at the knees by The Dark Knight, which opened a week later.

But, but, but! Hellboy II compiled $160 million worldwide, which should compel anyone to ask why a third movie wasn’t an automatic. Some critics and fans view Hellboy II as better than the original film (generating an 85 percent positive rating at Rotten Tomatoes). Was that not enough money in the studio’s view (in this case, Universal Pictures)? Was there doubt that another Hellboy sequel could make more money, since it was likely to be more expensive to produce?

Unfortunately, doubling its budget at the box office probably means Hellboy II broke even. (That’s not a hard-and-fast rule, and it depends on how much is spent on marketing. But a decent one to go by is that a big-budget movie needs to make more than twice its budget to be considered profitable.) That sort of box office indicates that an audience exists for the film. Yet will it be there for Hellboy, Abe Sapien and the B.P.R.D. more than 10 years after the last movie?

[The Hollywood Reporter]

About Ian Casselberry

Ian is a writer, editor, and podcaster. You can find his work at Awful Announcing and The Comeback. He's written for Sports Illustrated, Yahoo Sports, MLive, Bleacher Report, and SB Nation.