Last week, we reported Millennium Media is looking to relaunch Hellboy once again. The studio will turn to Crank director Brian Taylor to helm Hellboy: The Crooked Man, and the filmmaker is opening up about what he plans to do with everyone’s favorite red hell beast.
During a recent interview with Collider, Taylor said he is looking to go a new direction; while not reinventing the story, he wants to follow something closer to the grim Crooked Man story of the comics.
Taylor first expresses his love of the source material and past iconic renditions. “I love the character of Hellboy, and my favorite run of the character is this particular era. The GDT movies were massive-scale space operas and just pure Del Toro through and through,” says Taylor. “But some of the comics Mike Mignola was doing at the time had a very different feeling. More lean and mean creepy folk horror. A younger Hellboy, wandering the dark corners of the world… Paranormal investigator, night stalker….”
He adds, “The appeal of this one, to me, is to go back to that and do a real reset and really give us that version of Hellboy, which I just don’t think we’ve seen yet… we’re coming at this film, from a place of love for the original material, and for the character, for Mike’s character.”
Concluding, Taylor says he wants to create something for real die-hard fans. “We’re not trying to reinvent some completely different idea of Hellboy – we’re trying to get back to the feeling of these particular books from the mid-aughts. It’s something that hasn’t been seen on screen before, but it’s a version I think hardcore Hellboy fans will want to see.”
Hellboy: The Crooked Man will begin production in April in Bulgaria and Greece.
