Hellboy Reboot Coming from Millennium and Ketchup

Movies

Ketchup Entertainment is hoping the third time’s the charm for Hellboy. Deadline exclusively reports that the relatively new player (and I use the term loosely) has acquired the distribution rights for Millennium’s new Hellboy film, Hellboy: The Crooked Man. The movie, which is not a sequel to the Hellboy reboot from 2019 but is another reboot, has wrapped filming (in Bulgaria, which is doubling for Appalachia). Jack Kesy stars as Hellboy, with Jefferson White and Adeline Rudolph in supporting roles. Directed by Brian Taylor and written by the character’s creator, Mike Mignola, and Christopher Golden (based on one of the comic book stories by Mignola), Hellboy: The Crooked Man doesn’t have a release date yet.

Look at the cast and the fact that they shot the whole thing in Bulgaria without making any kind of announcement and tell me they’re not doing this as cheaply as possible after the 2019 Hellboy bombed big time. Maybe Jack Kesy is a great actor who’ll make a fantastic Hellboy, but he’s not a name on the level of Ron Perlman or David Harbour (and as much as I like them as actors, they’re not exactly superstars either). The only role of his I recall is Black Tom Cassidy from Deadpool 2, and I barely remember that; Black Tom wasn’t as important in the movie as he was in the comics. And I didn’t know Ketchup Entertainment existed, probably because the only movie of theirs I’ve heard of is Hypnotic. But this is what happens after an IP has a bad track record: any further attempts have to be budgeted relative to what they expect to pull in at the box office. With Mignola co-writing the script, this one might be more in line with the comics, which means less humor than the Guillermo del Toro films. I read the first comic arc (on which del Toro’s first movie was based), and it was dull and dour; if that’s the direction the new one goes, I don’t think it’s going to reverse the trend of its predecessors. Then again, Brian Taylor is one of the directors of the Crank movies, and those are wild, energetic flicks, so maybe his influence will bring the fun.