What the hell is going on with Hellboy’s abs here? Photo : Empire Magazine

It seems like it’s been ages since we got our first look at noted father figure David Harbour as the new take on Mike Mignola’s Hellboy or heard anything major about Lionsgate’s upcoming reboot of the beloved franchise. Thankfully, today, that changes.




In a recent interview with Empire magazine, director Neil Marshall explained some of the logic behind the studio’s decision to go with a darker, more adult-oriented spin on Hellboy in order to differentiate this film from previous incarnations. And the magazine debuted a new image...

Empire’s full Hellboy image. Photo : Empire Magazine


This Hellboy, Marshall said, is so blood-soaked (and R-rated) in large part because those were the kinds of stories Mignola originally wrote:



“It was always a case of, ‘When in doubt, go back to the source material.’ Some of the stuff is pretty sick. More violent and more bloody. We weren’t making it with handcuffs on.”

As much as we all loved Ron Perlman’s Hellboy, there was a certain degree of lightheartedness that always made him a bit more lovable than his name let on. It’s interesting that Marshall’s choosing to at least partially try to play up some of the character’s more monstrous elements—something made clear by his much grimier, more demonic appearance here.

What’s really scary, though, is that when Hellboy bursts into theaters on April 12, 2019, it’s going to be impossible to look at his barrel chest and not see it as a humongous, throbbing heart.


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