Ron Perlman Doubts He’ll Play Another Superhero

Most Hellboy fans consider Ron Perlman to be the defining performer to bring the character to life, thanks to his live-action portrayals and his voice acting work for animated adventures. With David Harbour now taking over the role for a reboot, this frees up Perlman to potentially pursue other franchises, though he doubts we’ll see him enter the world of superheroes anytime soon.

“Well, I’m not much of a comic book dude, so I don’t know who’s really out there,” Perlman shared with ComicBook.com about his interest in other superheroes. “I didn’t find Hellboy, Guillermo [del Toro] found Hellboy and Guillermo just introduced Hellboy to me and infused me with his boyish fanboy obsession with the character. That’s what got me through that one. No, there’s no comic book character that I have identified that I’m dying to play. Plus, I don’t know if, at 68, I should even be educating the notion of superheroes anymore.”

Perlman first embodied the character in a 2004 film, reprising the role for a 2008 sequel. In the decade since that film’s release, fans have hoped to see a new film come together to complete the trilogy.

Unfortunately, the powers that be decided to focus on a reboot of the character, tapping Harbour to play Hellboy with Neil Marshall directing. Perlman recently shared that his closeness to the character still makes the reboot a hard pill to swallow.

“I felt like we owed the fans closure, and there were too many people moving in too many other directions and I just couldn’t pull it off,” Perlman shared with Collider. “So if you ask me about it, it’s kind of still an open wound.”

The actor claimed it was the time he spent “poking and prodding the bear” about trying to make a third film happen that left him especially disappointed about news of the reboot.

He added, “I never thought it was going through, but I did know that Guillermo had an amazing idea of how to close the trilogy. It was theatrically so dynamic. If you were a fan of the first two Hellboys, not only were you going to have the top of your head blown off by how it resolved, but you were going to get the payoff in the investment because it was always designed to be a trilogy.”

While we might not see him enter the superhero world again anytime soon, fans can check out his latest film, Asher, which hits select theaters, VOD, and Digital HD on December 7th.

Are you disappointed we won’t see Perlman in another comic book film? Let us know in the comments below!