Guillermo del Toro has laid a rumor to rest: “Hellboy 3” will “not happen,” he said on Twitter on Tuesday morning.
Hellboy 3 Sorry to report: Spoke w all parties. Must report that 100% the sequel will not happen. And that is to be the final thing about it
— Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) February 21, 2017
In the past few weeks, the filmmaker has teased fans with “Hellboy 3,” putting polls on Twitter about the threequel and writing that he met with Ron Perlman, who is “in for the sit down.”
Previously, when asked when fans might expect “Hellboy 3,” del Toro said plainly that it wasn’t on the horizon. “We have gone through basically every studio and asked for financing, and they are not interested,” he elaborated. “I think that the first movie made its budget back, and a little bit of profit, but then it was very, very big on video and DVD.” He said that the second film followed a similar path.
Del Toro went on to say that he’d love to get involved with a third “Hellboy” film, even offering a teaser as to what story he’d tell.
“The idea for it was to have Hellboy finally come to terms with the fact that his destiny … is to become the beast of the Apocalypse … and he has to do it, in order to be able to ironically vanquish the foe that he has to face in the 3rd film,” del Toro told his fans. “He has to become the beast of the Apocalypse to be able to defend humanity, but at the same time he becomes a much darker being. It’s a very interesting ending to the series, but I don’t think it will happen.”
The first “Hellboy” earned a worldwide total of $99 million at the box office and starred Perlman and Selma Blair. Del Toro wrote and directed the film, which is based on the comic book series of the same name. Its sequel, “Hellboy II: The Golden Army,” performed better, earning $160 million worldwide. Although the movies weren’t runaway smash hits, critics loved them, both earning a score in the 80s on Rotten Tomatoes.
This isn’t the first film that del Toro has reluctantly dropped in recent years. According to Digital Spy, he was attached to direct the live-action “Halo” movie, but the project never materialized. He was also set to reinvent “The Hobbit” movies with Peter Jackson but couldn’t get the necessary funding from MGM. And del Toro’s passion project, “At the Mountains of Madness,” starred Tom Cruise in the lead role and had James Cameron attached as a producer — but it never came together due to a spiraling budget.
For now, fans can be excited about del Toro’s other projects, which include “The Shape of Water” and “Pacific Rim: Uprising.”