Oh man, how many damn times do we have to go back an forth about ‘Hellboy 3’? The news came out recently that Guillermo del Toro was having a sit down with Mike Mignola, Ron Perlman and Co. about the serious possibility of finally getting started on the third and final chapter of the Hellboy movie franchise. I’ve gotta admit I was pretty excited. I really enjoyed the two Hellboy movies, not as much as I love the comic books as they’ve got two very different tones but still they were a totally solid attempt at bringing the Mignola-verse to life. Apparently though the general public wasn’t as taken with the movies, perhaps because of the truly bizarre nature of the characters or the occult horror undertones of a “superhero” movie. Whatever the case I’ve stated before that I simply think the movies were a bit ahead of their time and if released in the current climate they’d have fared far better.

Well it seems the whole ‘Hellboy 3’ thing fell completely apart in the last few days with Guillermo del Toro tweeting “Hellboy 3 Sorry to report: Spoke w all parties. Must report that 100% the sequel will not happen. And that is to be the final thing about it”. Damn. That’s pretty harsh coming from the usually jovial Guillermo. Soon after Ron Perlman tweeted “Superhero seeks employment. Likes, pizza, cats, and the Marx bros.” Sounds like a tragic end to the whole debacle doesn’t it? It makes me really wonder just what the hell (no pun intended) happened in this “meeting” and what led to such a dramatic end to the film’s future? Well amidst my disappointment on the whole thing I found Hellboy creator Mike Mignola’s response extremely interesting as he tweeted “No GDT Hellboy 3 does not mean there is no future to the Hellboy franchise…”

Well, well, well now there’s an interesting thought that had never even occurred to me straight from the mouth of the REAL force of Hellboy. So it seems that perhaps there IS a future in the movies as Mignola states that just because del Toro is not attached to it anymore doesn’t mean that Hellboy dies altogether on the silver screen. This kinda opens a whole new can of conquerer worms! Us Hellboy and BPRD fans need to look forward and realize that Guillermo del Toro is NOT Hellboy. Sure he helmed two pretty decent movies and had plans to end the franchise with one more apocalyptic film. In my opinion there’s a ton of Hellboy stories to tell before that happens. Perhaps the next Hellboy movie doesn’t need to be the be all end all. Perhaps after a movie like ‘Logan’ drops which has a far lower budget focusing less on epic effects driven extravaganzas while striving more heavily for a more contained personal plot we may see superhero movies move in a bit of a different direction.

The next Hellboy doesn’t really need to be a traditional summer blockbuster. It could stand on it’s own two feet with the proper love and care that the comic books have have given us for more than 20 years. Of course del Toro’s gothic style and incredibly impressive visionary monsters would be missed. His vision was incredibly grand and that’s one of the things that I believe played a major role in the third film never happening. It was just too damn expensive to take the risk on it performing on a mediocre level at the box office. However, not every superhero flick needs to look like an overblown Avengers movie. I think Hellboy and The BPRD could function even better with a lower budget and smaller scale adventures. The best thing about the comic books are the characters, the atmosphere and then the mysterious creepy cases they’re sent out on. I’d say maybe even give Hellboy an R rating, up the horror a bit, tone down the comedy a hair and give just give us an intriguing adventure for the agents to embark on. That being said there are a ton of directors out there who could do it right and maybe even better than del Toro at this point. It’s time to let go of Guillermo, keep Perlman & crew and start thinking about who out there could helm another great Hellboy adventure. What do you think, is Hellboy dead in the theater just because of Guillermo del Toro decision not to continue on?