If you’ve ever watched a movie, played a video game or glanced at a TV series, then chances are you’ll have seen or heard Ron Perlman at least once. The 70 year-old is one of the most famously prolific actors in the industry, with over 260 credits to his name. Since the beginning of last year alone, he’s lent his voice to six live-action and animated shows and appeared in eight films, but to a lot of people, he’ll always be best remembered as Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy.
The duo first collaborated on Cronos way back in 1993 and have since reunited for Blade II, Hellboy, sequel The Golden Army and Pacific Rim, while Perlman will also appear in the filmmaker’s upcoming psychological thriller Nightmare Alley and his stop-motion Pinocchio, not to mention he has voice roles in del Toro-produced animations The Book of Life and Trollhunters.
Given that they’ve been close friends for almost 30 years, you can fully understand why neither would sanction the idea of completing the proposed Hellboy trilogy without the other, despite how much the fans would love to see it happen. The closing chapter spent over a decade in development hell before being abandoned entirely in favor of the dire reboot, but in a recent interview, Perlman admitted that he’d still happily jump back into the makeup chair and play Big Red if the opportunity presented itself.
“I didn’t have an opinion about the new Hellboy or a wish for it to succeed or fail, but I did make it clear that if there was a chance to finish the trilogy with Guillermo, as we had done the first two films and in the image of what he had in mind in terms of closing all of the circles, that is something that I would, to this day, consider doing.”
Del Toro has already ruled out a third Hellboy, but nostalgia is a powerful weapon these days and sequels arriving decades later are becoming an increasingly regular phenomenon. Given the sheer volume of projects that the Academy Award winning The Shape of Water director attaches himself to, he might yet end up circling back around to it in the future.