Neil Marshall, the director of Hellboy, has revealed why the film decided to go after an R rating.
Movie lovers of all tastes are showing their appetite for adult movies at the box office on a consistent basis in recent years, this is particularly true when it comes to comic book movies – a genre that often avoided going R-rated.
With films like Deadpool and Logan doing very well with their more adult orientation, the reboot of the Hellboy franchise has decided this would be the right move for them as well. Speaking about the decision to JoBlo, director Neil Marshall said:
“I think it’s no accident that we’re going down that route following the success or proven success of those kind of films that you can do that, you can do this kind of movie aimed at, you know, the adult audience, that in some ways it was always intended for, especially with this character and this material. So that didn’t hurt us, for sure. But it was never a case of like, it was always a case of when in doubt, go back to the source material and not go running wild and start throwing things in that didn’t belong to that world. So it was never a case of like, hey, we’ve got freedom to do whatever we want.
“But what it did feel like was, and you know, when they said it was good to do the R-rated thing, it just meant we weren’t making it with handcuffs on, in a way. It was like making it without limits, but not treating it as limitless, if that makes any sense.”
SEE ALSO: The Blood Queen has an offer for Hellboy in new clip from the movie reboot
The move to go R-rated surely pleased many fans of the source material. We will have to wait and see, however, if the decision pays off in the end.
Hellboy is back, and he’s on fire. From the pages of Mike Mignola’s seminal work, this action-packed story sees the legendary half-demon superhero (David Harbour, “Stranger Things”) called to the English countryside to battle a trio of rampaging giants. There he discovers The Blood Queen, Nimue (Milla Jovovich, Resident Evil series), a resurrected ancient sorceress thirsting to avenge a past betrayal. Suddenly caught in a clash between the supernatural and the human, Hellboy is now hell-bent on stopping Nimue without triggering the end of the world.
Hellboy is set for release on April 11th 2019 sees Neil Marshall (Game of Thrones) directing Stranger Things star David Harbour in the lead role alongside Ian McShane (American Gods) as Professor Bruttenholm, Sasha Lane (American Honey) as Alice Monaghan, Milla Jovovich (Resident Evil) as the Queen of Blood, Daniel Dae Kim (Hawaii Five-O) as Major Ben Daimio and Penelope Mitchell (The Vampire Diaries) as Ganeida.
Originally published March 28, 2019. Updated March 19, 2020.
