‘Hellboy’ Reboot Is Very Close to the Comics According to Creator

Hellboy is blazing back into theaters with a completely new style next year, a style that creator Mike Mignola claims is very accurate to his source material.

Game of Thrones director Neil Marshall is resurrecting the Hellboy franchise with Stranger Things star David Harbour suiting up to play the titular character. This new take on the comics will be a much darker, more R-rated version than Guillermo Del Toro’s movies that came out more than ten years ago.

Mignola recently spoke to EW and revealed what he’s been involved in the creative process of the new adaptation, and assured fans that the movie will connect to the comics on a much deeper level than the other films did in the past.

“It’s funny, because my involvement has been very different than the Del Toro movies,” Mignola said. “The difference is I had known Del Toro for six years by the time we did the first movie. Neil I met a couple months before he worked on the movie. It was very different, but I have been involved ever since they said ‘Hey we’re gonna make another Hellboy movie, and we’re gonna do this story.’ I’ve bounced back and forth with them about how to adapt this particular Hellboy story. At various times I’ve jumped in and been much more active in the screenplay than I ever was on the Del Toro movies. But I did nothing so far as design stuff on the movie. Guillermo wanted me as a concept artist, but on this movie, there were other concept artists. I came in and I looked at some stuff, but they were trying to do something so close to what’s on the comics that they really leaned on what had been done by Duncan [Fegredo] and me in the comics.”

Del Toro’s first Hellboy movie was based on the “Seed of Destruction” storyline, while the second was a vision all its own. Marshall’s new film however, will take from a different arc in the comic series.

The upcoming Hellboy reboot will focus on the story of the Blood Queen, which was told over the course of three miniseries (Darkness Calls, The Wild Hunt, and The Storm and Fury), written by Mignola and illustrated by Duncan Fegredo. In the story, the Blood Queen (being played in the film by Milla Jovovich) raises an army of demonic fairies to attack the mortal world.

“The first film was based on one of the comics, but Del Toro was looking to reinvent everything. I think the difference is here, the bulk of the Fegredo arc takes place in the real world,” Mignola said. “So instead of making up a whole fantasy world, it was, ‘Let’s find locations that feel like these real-world locales that Duncan drew in the comic.’ I think the bulk of the characters in the film are established in the comic. It was insane for me to walk in there and see that someone did a really nice rendering of a creature I created or Duncan created. It’s got a whole different feel from the older movies. Duncan’s not working on it, but I did see stuff in the movie that was so close to what Duncan drew, more so than what was in the previous movies. It was pretty exciting. “

Marshall’s Hellboy reboot is set to hit theaters on January 11, 2019.

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