By Hey, do you remember Hellboy? You know, the mildly successful 2004 adaptation of the Dark Horse comic book franchise directed by Guillermo del Toro? Well, star Ron Perlman sure does, and it looks like he’s ready to get back in the saddle. Or the complicated devil makeup, as it were. A post on the actor’s Facebook page expressed his interest:
Maybe “earned” is a little too strong – after all, the 2004 original did spawn one sequel, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, in 2008. Let’s just say that one was…not as well received as the first, and more or less put the kibosh on the franchise going any further at that point (well, that and the fact that around that time is when Perlman hopped on a hog to play a notorious biker gang leader on FX’s Sons of Anarchy for a few years).
Then again, Hellboy II crashed and burned before the true advent of the shared comic book movie universe, even though the first Iron Man beat it to theaters by a couple of months. Now, every studio wants to get in on the mega-franchise action, and the Hellboy universe is certainly filled with characters who are interesting enough (on paper, at least) to anchor their own spin-off films. Of course, that’s a lot of pure speculation to glean from a single Facebook post – but just saying, if ever there was a time to resurrect Hellboy as a film property, it would seem to be now (and hey, if Iron Man 2 didn’t totally tank the MCU, we can give Hellboy a pass for The Golden Army, right?).
Having the main actor rarin’ to go on a sequel is a boon, of course, but it’s by no means a guarantee. Then again, in a world where anything and everything is open to revival by either crowd-funding or Netflix, anything is possible.