Hellboy: The Crooked Man Director Teases R-Rated “Folk-Horror Movie”

News emerged last week that there would be another new take on the cult-classic comic hero Hellboy, this time with Crank and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance co-director Brian Taylor at the helm, who recently teased that his Hellboy: The Crooked Man would embrace an unsettling and R-rated tone. The first two live-action adaptations from director Guillermo del Toro and starring Ron Perlman were critical hits, though embraced a PG-13 tone, while 2019’s Hellboy earned an R rating, yet was a failure with both audiences and critics alike. The new Hellboy movie is expected to start shooting in the coming months.

“I pitched an R-rated folk-horror movie and the team here at Millennium have been nothing but supportive. It’s a great group of people, and they love horror,” Taylor revealed to Collider. “We’ve definitely had a discussion of, you know, it doesn’t really serve anybody to make something R for R’s sake. To say it has to be R so we have to add A, B, and C. But this material, this original material is dark and scary and violent and adult. So in order to really embrace that, we just don’t wanna have any handcuffs on.”

While the film isn’t officially confirmed to have “The Crooked Man” title, Taylor notes that this run of the character in the comics serves as a major influence on his narrative.

“So first of all, I love the character of Hellboy and my favorite run of the character is this particular era. The [Guillermo del Toro] movies were massive-scale space operas and just pure Del Toro through and through,” the filmmaker expressed. “But some of the comics [creator] 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… The Crooked Man in particular is just such an iconic book — written by Mike, drawn by Richard Corben, another legend. Set in the late ’50s. For me, it’s my favorite version of the character. So 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.”

The director also admitted that creator Mike Mignola was involved in the project to write the script, alongside writer Christopher Golden, with one challenge being how the project will honor the source material while not being a literal translation.

“We started with a draft by Mike and Chris Golden. Funny enough, a lot of what I’m doing is trying to bring it even closer to the original comic book than what they did.” Taylor confessed. “A comic book will never directly translate to the screen, but I will tell you that my intent in the movie is to really honor and bring to life the original comics.”

Stay tuned for details on the new Hellboy.

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