In the space of five short years, Guillermo del Toro delivered the dazzling one-two punch of Hellboy and its somewhat underappreciated sequel, The Golden Army, rendering the likes of Ron Perlman, Doug Jones and Selma Blair into household names – if they weren’t already, of course.
Perhaps more so than any other Hellboy alumni, it is Doug Jones who continues to collaborate with del Toro even to this day, most recently providing the mo-cap performance for his fish creature in the Oscar-winning hit, The Shape of Water.
And though he isn’t involved in Lionsgate’s Hellboy reboot whatsoever, Jones recently sat down with Screen Rant to discuss the future of Big Red, and why he’s open to the possibility of another actor being cast as the young Abe Sapien.
I’m told that Abe Sapien doesn’t really show up in this first reboot movie, so for a minute here I’m kind of – I’m OK with the fact that I don’t have to watch somebody else do that role just yet. I’d love to see the first and how they set up now with David Harbour, who is a brilliant actor and sweetheart of a guy. We met at Comic-Con last year and we hugged it out – really nice to make that Hellboy connection with him.
Currently, Lionsgate and director Neil Marshall have only one Hellboy movie planned (January 2019), though we’re inclined to believe that Marshall and his team will reunite in the not-so-distant future should their adult-oriented reboot prove to be a success.
If that is the case, and Abe Sapien and the wider B.P.R.D. feature in Hellboy 2, Doug Jones has some advice for his successor:
If and when Abe Sapien does enter the storyline in subsequent movies, I honestly would not have any advice for anyone besides have patience with the make-up, but otherwise make the character your own. And, also, anytime you take on a comic book character you must know your source material. The fans depend on it, the fans will want to ask you about it. It’s an injustice to the fans of the source material if you don’t know it going in. And it will help inspire you performance on film if you know the comic books that you’re coming from.
The Hellboy of 2019, starring David Harbour, Ian McShane and Milla Jovovich as the nefarious Blood Queen, opens worldwide on January 11th.