It was announced last week Brian Taylor would direct a live-action reboot of Hellboy: The Crooked Man from Millennium Media. Hellboy originally started with directors Guillermo del Toro and Ron Perlman. The two created humorous films with supernatural elements with a working-class hero. There was never a third film, which proved disappointing since Hellboy II: The Golden Army was successful on its own. Although Harbour’s reboots tried to recapture the magic of the originals, Taylor wants to take the new film in a new direction.
“So first of all, I love the character of Hellboy, and my favorite run of the character is this particular era. The GDT movies were massive-scale space operas and just pure Del Toro through and through. But some of the comics 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 and 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 give us that version of Hellboy, which I don’t think we’ve seen yet.”
In The Crooked Man comics, we see Hellboy in 1950s Appalachia, where he hunts Tom Ferrell, who made a deal with the Devil – The Crooked Man. Ferrell is a witch who must atone for his sins, and he partners up with Hellboy and a local witch named Cora. The three venture up mountains to the church in The Crooked Man’s domain.
Taylor wants to stick as closely as he can to Mignola’s work, in fact, the script itself comes from Mignola and his partner Christopher Golden.
“We started with a draft by Mike and Chris. 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 talked about the adaptation process. “I guess the answer is both, you know? 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.”
In keeping with the tradition of the graphic nature of the comic and staying true to the content, the film will be R-rated. “I pitched an R-rated folk horror movie, and the team here at Millennium has been nothing but supportive. It’s a great group of people who love horror,” he added. Continuing, he ensured everyone working on the new Hellboy understood that this material needed to be R-rated to be done correctly.
“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.”
Hellboy: The Crooked Man will consist of three leads: Hellboy, Tom, and in a surprise twist, John the Balladeer – not Cora.
“In addition to HB himself, there’s Tom Ferrell, who fans of the comic book will know… a character I think inspired by Manly Wade Wellman’s John the Balladeer, from Weird Tales, great pulp folk horror tales from the 50s and 60s,” he said. “And there’s also a new character that Mike created for the film version that is gonna be a surprise.”
As for casting these roles, Taylor doesn’t know who will be the lead. Finding a new Hellboy that can match Harbour and the original’s magic will be a challenge.
“I’m as excited to learn that news as anybody else is. But we’ve got some amazing actors who are in the mix, and the goal is to break out a younger version of Hellboy.” Taylor could only hint that they were close to bringing the other leads on board as well.
Filming will begin in April and shoot mainly in Bulgaria, with some scenes in Greece. In addition to on-location shooting, there will be in-studio as well.
“We’ve been doing a lot of location scouting out here, and the goal is to recreate 1950s rural Appalachia, and the locations that we’re finding, I think would make fans of the original comic really excited. Because some of these places just seem to have sprung straight from the pages. There’s a lot of haunted woods in Bulgaria!”
Wrapping it up, Taylor assured us with the involvement of Mignola that the film is coming from a good place:
“I want fans to know that we’re coming at this film, from a place of love for the original material, and for the character, for Mike’s character. We’re not trying to reinvent some completely different idea of Hellboy—we’re trying to get back to the feeling of these particular books from the mid-aughts. It’s something that hasn’t been seen on screen before, but it’s a version I think hardcore Hellboy fans will want to see. Anyway, I do.”
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