It’s fair to say when it was first announced that the Hellboy franchise was to be rebooted and director Guillermo del Toro and star Ron Perlman wouldn’t get to bring us a third movie, fans of the Dark Horse comics character were pretty upset. The more we’ve learned about the project though, the more people’s opinions of it have turned around and now, anticipation is sky high. Especially after that first trailer was shown off.
Yes, as you no doubt heard, those at New York Comic Con got the chance to see some footage from Hellboy and judging by the online reactions, everyone was pretty pleased with what they laid eyes on. Unfortunately, Lionsgate has yet to release the preview online, but a leaked version has made its way onto the web today and you can check it out down below. But hurry, as it’ll likely be pulled down pretty soon.
Though it’s far from the best quality, what we’ve got here is certainly watchable and we get a pretty good look at Harbour’s iteration of the titular hero, as well as glimpses of Alice Monaghan (Sasha Lane), Professor Bruttenholm (Ian McShane), Ben Daimio (Daniel Dae Kim), and Nimue the Blood Queen (Milla Jovovich). All in all, it paints a very promising picture of what’s to come and we can’t wait to see more.
While they did have a bit of a supernatural and spooky flavor to them, del Toro’s previous Hellboy movies also had to straddle the line between being accessible to a younger crowd as well as allowing the visionary filmmaker to do his thing. Here, that doesn’t look to be the case, with director Neil Marshall appearing to be aiming for a more mature and gritty take on the property, which certainly seems to be working well so for.
Hopefully, now that this footage has leaked online, Lionsgate will release something official sooner rather than later. After all, the Hellboy reboot storms into theaters on April 12th, 2019 – one week after Shazam! – so we imagine it won’t be too much longer now before the marketing campaign kicks off in earnest. And as soon as they open up the flooodgates, we’ll be sure to let you know.