Originally, Guillermo Del Toro had hoped to make Hellboy 3 with Ron Perlman, but the studio executives went with a 15-certificate movie instead. After all, Deadpool and Logan had been huge hits, so surely a sweary, bloody Hellboy reboot would work? Sadly for fans, this wasn’t the at case as the comic book movie was critically panned with 16% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, and just $21.9 million made at the box office on a $50 million budget. Now Hellboy star himself Harbour has spoken out on why the movie failed.
Appearing at MCM Comic-Con London over the weekend, Harbour opening up about Hellboy.
According to Digital Spy, the Stranger Things star said: “We did our best, but there’s so many voices that go into these things and they’re not always going to work out.
“I did what I could do and I feel proud of what I did, but ultimately I’m not in control of a lot of those things.
“The problem that I have with comic book movies nowadays is that I think, and it’s a result of the power of Marvel stuff, it’s like chocolate, it’s a flavour.”
Harbour continued; “So everybody goes chocolate is delicious and these guys make the best chocolate.
“So as you judge the movies, it’s like, ‘Well it’s not as chocolatey as this, this does not taste like chocolate at all’.
“And I sort of want a world where there’s more flavours than just comparisons to chocolate.
“So in that way when Hellboy is viewed on the chocolate spectrum, it does very poorly. That being said, it also has major problems.”
He added: “I think as a rental or as a movie that you see on an aeroplane, I think you’d be like, ‘Oh that was fun’ because it’s a fun movie, and I think it was unfairly bludgeoned as a result of these comparisons.”
Tragically, Hellboy’s final scene and end credits scenes teased a sequel that will probably never happen.
The ending saw Hellboy discovering Abe, who is a prominent character in the original two films.
While the end credits scene teased that a bigger war was on the way.