The trailer for the reboot of Hellboy - starring Stranger Things star David Harbour - has been leaked online ahead of the expected date.

We weren't supposed to see anything about it until tomorrow at the earliest, but a deleted tweet from the official Twitter account of the movie has given comic book movie fans an early Christmas present.

Obviously, because the Internet is always watching, someone quickly ripped the trailer and has made it available to the whole world.

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The latest attempt at bringing the Dark Horse Comics character to the big screen takes a significantly different approach to the character than the first attempt, which was made by Guillermo Del Toro and starred Ron Perlman, back in 2004.

David Harbour as Hellboy. Credit: Lionsgate

In fact, this new R-Rated version of the film looks to have taken a leaf out of Deadpool's book - which isn't actually that silly a move given how successful that film and its sequel Deadpool 2 proved to be.

While the Perlman and Del Toro films were relative successes, this new film promises to be a complete departure from that whole schtick.

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It had been thought that Del Toro and Perlman actually wanted to get more films made in the series, but it just never materialised.

With that in mind, Hellboy's original creator Mike Mignola decided to take the whole thing in a different direction and start from scratch by rebooting the character.

To that end, he hired Neil Marshall, who had previously worked on productions like Game of Thrones.

Mignola told Deadline: "We went back and forth on that.

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"Early on there was some idea of continuing the storyline that del Toro had started but would that be fair to a new director?

"So we decided to just start over. Neil is a horror director, so the idea then was to make a darker film. If you are going to use a guy, let him do what he does best."

Hellboy will be in cinemas next year. Credit: Lionsgate

He continued: "We went through the script taking out the del Toro-isms and in some ways go out of our way to make sure we are doing a different Hellboy with its own distinct character [as a project] but still adhering to the comics."

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We don't know a great deal about what the plot of the film will be like, but Stranger Things star David Harbour offered up some opinions in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly.

Harbour said: "It's not an origin story, but it's his coming to terms with where he came from."

"He's been Hellboy for a long time, but there's a new turn of events at the start of the film, where people start to bring up the fact that he might bring about the end of the world, and it's really the first time he's heard anything like that.

"The question that comes up in the movie is where does he really belong?"

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