Don't pull the plug on those Hellboy 3 fantasies just yet, as Ron Perlman is reigniting hope that the sequel could finally end up happening. In 2004, Perlman starred in the first Hellboy film from writer-director Guillermo del Toro. The pair would team back up for the 2008 sequel Hellboy II: The Golden Army, and like the original, it drew good reviews in addition to strong returns at the box office. At the time, both Perlman and del Toro were open to doing another film, but it seemed like all hope was lost by the time the franchise was rebooted with an all-new Hellboy film released in 2019.
As it turns out, that Hellboy reboot crashed and burned as a box office bomb plagued with bad reviews. The reboot flopping meant that this new film wouldn't be given any of its own sequels either, putting the Hellboy franchise back on ice. However, many fans still look back fondly at those original Hellboy films from Perlman and del Toro, and though the actor isn't getting any younger, he made it clear in a chat with The Independent that he wants to give the fans the "epic conclusion" he feels they deserve.
“Am I eager to do Hellboy 3? No, I’m 71 f--king years old. [But] we owe this to the fans, and we should give it to them because it would be an epic conclusion. So Guillermo, if you’re reading, I’m not done pounding you to get this f--king thing done.”
Ron Perlman Will Only Make a Hellboy Movie if Guillermo del Toro Is Involved
As eager as Ron Perlman is to do another Hellboy, the condition is that it's got to be Guillermo del Toro at the helm. In fact, Perlman was even given the opportunity to revisit Hellboy for the ill-fated 2019 reboot, but it was not even a consideration with del Toro not a part of the project.
“The reboot was something I had the opportunity to participate in and decided that the only version of Hellboy I’m interested in is the one I do with Guillermo,” Perlman told CBM in 2020. “So in walking away from it, I truly walked away from it, and haven’t seen it or heard much about it. I wished them well, but it was not in my bailiwick.”
It has also been speculated that the continued fan demand for Hellboy 3 was a large contributor of the 2019 reboot's downfall. Many fans of the character simply weren't quite ready to give up on that third installment, so while David Harbour did his best portraying a new incarnation of the character, rebooting Hellboy at this time might have been an idea doomed from the start.
“I think it failed before we began shooting because I think that people didn’t want us to make the movie,” Harbour said on Instagram after the film flopped. “Guillermo del Toro and Ron Perlman created this iconic thing that we thought could be reinvented and then [fans] certainly — the loudness of the internet was like, ‘We do not want you to touch this.’ People were just very very against it and that’s people’s right.”
The time is now to make Hellboy 3 if it's ever going to happen at all, so let's hope del Toro is watching and that the gears can start moving soon on turning this into a reality.