Brian Taylor doesn’t see Hellboy: The Crooked Man as a reboot (or “a cheap knock-off”), but as a standalone adaptation of the comics
A new live-action vision of Hellboy will be coming to our screens soon. Directed by Crank‘s Brian Taylor from a screenplay by Chris Golden and Hellboy comic book creator Mike Mignola, Hellboy: The Crooked Man is commonly being referred to as a franchise reboot… but that’s not how Taylor sees it.
Speaking to Total Film, Taylor said that this was an attempt to be closer to the source material than previous Hellboy movies have been. “As cool as those other movies were, even Mignola will tell you it’s not quite his character.” He went on to say, “I don’t think in terms of ‘it’s a reboot’ or trying to start a new franchise – this isn’t content, it’s a movie that needs to stand on its own. Nobody wants to see a cheap knock-off of a Guillermo del Toro $100-million movie. This is going back to the young Hellboy where he was really more of the plumber who’s going to fix your monster problem. This wandering, sarcastic, soulful, smoking guy who stumbles on supernatural hauntings and occurrences and helps out as best he can. If Mike feels like for the first time he sees his guy on screen, then I feel like we’ve succeeded.“
As Taylor references, the Guillermo del Toro movies had substantially higher budgets than what Hellboy: The Crooked Man had to work with. The budgets weren’t quite $100 million, but up there in the $60+ million and $80+ million range. Even the 2019 Neil Marshall movie had a $50 million budget, and this new movie looks to be well below that. So it’s good that the director is selling his movie as something different than what we’ve seen before, not a “cheap knock-off,” reboot or not.
Hellboy: The Crooked Man will see Hellboy and a rookie BPRD agent stranded in 1950s rural Appalachia. There, they discover a small community haunted by witches, led by a local devil with a troubling connection to Hellboy’s past: the Crooked Man. In the comic, The Crooked Man was an eighteenth-century miser and war profiteer named Jeremiah Witkins who was hanged for his crimes yet returned from Hell as the region’s resident Devil. The film has been rated R for some violent content, language and nudity.
Hellboy is played by Jack Kesy, who may be best known for playing Black Tom Cassidy in Deadpool 2. Kesy is joined in the cast by Jefferson White of Yellowstone as Tom Ferrell and Adeline Rudolph of the Netflix Resident Evil series as Bobbie Jo Song. According Hellboy.Fandom, Tom Ferrell is a character from the comic books who “was born around 1923 in the Appalachian mountains near the Hurricane (an area locals try to avoid) to a mother we know little of and his father, Charles E. Ferrel, who had a habit of drinking in the back woods. His early misadventures with witchcraft led to a self-imposed exodus.” Tales from the Collection adds that the story will introduce parapsychologist Bobbie Jo Song, who is tasked with delivering a spider to the BPRD but must seek Hellboy’s help when things go awry. Together, they travel to Appalachia to take on the Crooked Man, who has been sent back to Earth to collect souls for the devil.
Millennium Media producer Les Weldon told us this is “a true, dark, DARK, in the style of the comic book take on it. There’s no gloss that any of the other films had. There’s a methodical pace and a real creepiness to it.“
Do you consider Hellboy: The Crooked Man to be a reboot? Are you looking forward to this Brian Taylor film? Let us know by leaving a comment below.