Raise your hand if you had already forgotten that a new ‘Hellboy’ movie came out just last month. The reboot, helmed by Neil Marshall, and starring David Harbour in the title role, opened in third place with a dismal $12 million haul the weekend of April 12th, and plunged to the #10 spot the very next week, earning just $3.8M more. Now its finally left theaters for good, and after five weeks, earned only $21.9 million, on a production budget of $50M. Meaning that it cost Lionsgate $28.1M just on production. Its promotion and advertising budget was likely an additional $50M, if not more.
With foreign ticket sales added in, it made a total of $40M, which is still less than its production budget and once again, doesn’t factor in P&A.
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In contrast, Guillermo del Toro‘s first ‘Hellboy’, released in 2004, made $99.32M worldwide, on a budget of $66M. His direct sequel, ‘Hellboy: The Golden Army’ earned $160.38M globally in ’08, with a production budget of $88M. So the new movie made almost $60M less than the first, and that’s not even adjusted for inflation.
Audiences hated it, with opening weekend viewers giving it a C score through tracking service CinemaScore, and 2½ stars out of 5 through another service, PostTrak. Critics hated it even worse, with it resting at a dismal 16% on Rotten Tomatoes. Its audience score on RT is 59% which is downright generous.
Mila Jovovich, who played the villain in the new ‘Hellboy’, Nimue the Blood Queen, doesn’t give an F. She lashed out at critics on Instagram the weekend when the film opened:
I don’t know that EVERY one of those movies is a classic, and I don’t believe that ‘Dazed & Confused’ actually got poor reviews. (It has a 91% on RT now. Also, she was barely in it!)
There is the chance that the new ‘Hellboy’ could find its audience once it arrives on digital, Blu-Ray, streaming, or maybe even cable. Those that did enjoy it, like the fact that the film includes over-the-top violence and gore. And as Jovovich stated, the cast is very strong. Anything could happen in the future.
Did you see ‘Hellboy’ in theaters? If so, do you think it deserved the beating it took? Or did people miss the point?
Source: ComicBook.com