A few weeks have passed since Millennium Films announced that Hellboy, the legendary Dark Horse character created by Mike Mignola, would make his triumphant return to the screen after the abrupt failure of the 2019 version, starring Stranger Things and Marvel Studios star David Harbour.
Days after the announcement, the production company confirmed Jack Kesy (Deadpool 2) as the lead under the direction of Brian Taylor (Ghost Rider). The new story will adapt one of the character's more recent story arcs, The Crooked Man. The story follows a Hellboy who encounters an evil entity in rural Appalachia in the 1950s.
Taylor's idea is to move away from the previous versions to present an R-rated film, a folk horror tale closer to the source material. And it seems that Mignola is more than happy with what they are doing, as he revealed to Variety:
"His 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."
Mike Mignola on Why The Crooked Man Is the Right Choice
In that same interview, Mignola also spoke about how he thinks anything related to Hellboy should be done and why The Crooked Man is an excellent story to adapt:
“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.”
Hellboy is a fictional superhero who first appeared in San Diego Comic-Con Comics #2 in August 1993. He works for the B.P.R.D., an international non-governmental agency, and fights against dark forces, including Nazis and witches. He appears in a series of short stories rooted in folklore, pulp magazines, vintage adventures, Lovecraftian horror, and horror fiction.