HellboyWith how gung-ho ‘Hellboy: Rise of the Blood Queen‘ seems to be in rebooting the ‘Hellboy’ universe, it is a bit surprising to learn that the film was going to be a continuation of Guillermo del Toro’s ‘Hellboy’ movies. What might one day start up an entire cinematic universe, the original plan for ‘Rise of the Blood Queen’ had the film as a potential endcap or kicking off point from Ron Perlman’s central character. What shook things up is when director Neil Marshall came on board.

The news came from a recent interview over at Nerdist where Mignola stated:

“We originally started trying to tie it to the del Toro universe and continue those movies. But once we had Neil Marshall, we thought, ‘Why are we going to try and continue that universe?’ Because a del Toro movie is a del Toro movie, and you don’t want to try and hand a del Toro movie to someone else. Especially someone as great as Neil Marshall. So that’s when it went from being this continuation to being a reboot. It’s exciting to have another director. It’s exciting to take another path, to take that material and give it another leaning.

In fact, the original plan had always been for del Toro to finish up his own trilogy of films but the project kept getting delayed or didn’t have a budget. Mignola even stated:

“I would’ve loved to see Guillermo do his third movie and finish that story. But over the years it became very clear that wasn’t going to happen. About three years ago the producers, the screenwriter Andrew Cosby, and I all started working on this new story. Del Toro didn’t want to have anything to do with it, he wasn’t going to direct. He was offered to be a producer, and Ron [Perlman] wouldn’t do it without Guillermo”

While he couldn’t share any details about the plot, Mignola did drop news of someone who is now attached to doing the film’s visuals!

“It’s very dizzying when you’ve been banging this story idea back and forth for all these years, and suddenly you have someone making it. And they’re making it tomorrow! And every day there’s a new development. So Joel Harlow (Logan, Pirates) is doing the makeup effects and just last Friday I went to his shop. I got to see the sculpts of the new version of Hellboy, and then the next day David Harbour was in there doing makeup tests. So it’s very, very exciting. [Joel] is so excited and so enthusiastic.”

Speaking of David Harbour as the new Hellboy:

“[David] is super excited about being Hellboy and he wants to make sure he gets it right. He’s texting me Hellboy questions about his history, about what the character would think about this or about that. It’s really exciting to be back and see this thing come together.”

It has to be pretty amazing to have Mignola on speed-dial to talk about Hellboy all day long or text about him at any rate.

Are you looking forward to ‘Hellboy: Rise of the Blood Queen’? Are you at all surprised that they initially had it planned to be an expansion of the original two films? Share your thoughts below!