Brian Taylor sees Hellboy: The Crooked Man not as a reboot (or “cheap copy”), but as an independent adaptation of the comics
A new live-action version of Hellboy will soon be on our screens. Directed by: crank‘s Brian Taylor based on a screenplay by Chris Golden and Hellboy Comic author Mike Mignola, Hellboy – The Cursed Man is commonly referred to as a franchise reboot… but Taylor sees it differently.
Speaking to Total Film, Taylor said this was an attempt to stay closer to the source material than previous Hellboy films.”As cool as those other movies were, even Mignola will tell you that’s not quite his character.He continued: “I don’t think it’s a reboot or that we’re trying to start a new franchise – this isn’t content, it’s a movie that has to stand on its own. Nobody wants to see a cheap copy of a $100 million Guillermo del Toro movie. This is a return to the young Hellboy, where he was more of the plumber who solves your monster problem. This wandering, sarcastic, soulful, smoking guy who stumbles upon supernatural hauntings and occurrences and helps however he can. If Mike feels like he’s seeing his guy on screen for the first time, then I think we’ve nailed it.“
As Taylor notes, Guillermo del Toro’s films had much higher budgets than Hellboy – The Cursed Man had to work. Budgets weren’t quite $100 million, but in the $60-80 million range. Even the 2019 Neil Marshall film had a $50 million budget, and this new film seems to be well under that, so it’s good that the director is selling his film as something different from what we’ve seen before, rather than a “cheap copy,” whether it’s been remade or not.
Hellboy – The Cursed Man will see Hellboy and a young BPRD agent find themselves stranded in rural Appalachia in the 1950s. There they discover a small witch-infested community led by a local devil with a disturbing connection to Hellboy’s past: the Crooked Man. In the comics, the Crooked Man was an 18th-century miser and war profiteer named Jeremiah Witkins who was hanged for his crimes but returned from Hell as the region’s resident devil. The film was rated R for some violent content, language and nudity.
Hellboy is played by Jack Kesy, who is perhaps best known for his role as Black Tom Cassidy in Deadpool 2. Kesy will be in the cast of Jefferson White of Yellowstone as Tom Ferrell and Adeline Rudolph from Netflix resident Evil series as Bobbie Jo Song. According to Hellboy.Fandom, Tom Ferrell is a character from the comics who was “born around 1923 in the Appalachian Mountains near Hurricane (an area the locals try to avoid) to a mother we know little about and his father, Charles E. Ferrell, who had a habit of drinking in the woods. His early misadventures with witchcraft led to a self-imposed exodus.” Tales from the Collection adds that the story Introducing parapsychologist Bobbie Jo Song, who is tasked with delivering a spider to the BPRD but must seek Hellboy’s help when things go wrong. Together they travel to Appalachia to battle the Crooked Man, who has been sent back to Earth to collect souls for the devil.
Millennium Media producer Les Weldon told us this was “a real, dark, DARK take on the style of the comic book version. There’s none of the sheen that the other movies had. It’s methodically paced and really scary.“
Do you think Hellboy – The Cursed Man be a reboot? Are you excited for this Brian Taylor film? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
