For those of us outside the production loop, it seemed like the announcement of the upcoming Hellboy reboot came from nowhere. But Hellboy creator Mike Mignola says work had been proceeding slowly for years. Then, all of a sudden, things started happening really fast.
Image: Dark Horse Comics
In a long interview with Multiversity Comics, Mignola details some of the behind-the-scenes iteration that was happening with Hellboy’s movie future:
‘It’s been in the planning stages for more than three years,’ said Mignola. ‘I have been involved in various stages along the way … It’s a very bizzare one because at some point I brought Chris [Golden] in because our regular writer was kind of going in circles, so Chris and I took a stab at it. I don’t want to write this stuff, but Chris and I would work together and we’d talk about it on the phone and he would write it up, and we would bang specifics back and forth. So Chris got involved for a little while, then he had other things he had to do, so it went back to the other writer, and then another writer came in eventually, and I assumed it was never gonna happen. It would get almost done – when Chris and I were working on it everyone was like, “Yes! Now! We’re really happy. It’s great. This is what we want to do,” and then suddenly, “Why don’t we make it a reboot?”‘
But once they decided on that particular path, they needed to decide exactly how to traverse it.
‘Once it became a reboot, at first we thought we’d just take out the little details that pertain to the del Toro stuff. But once you start doing that then the whole thing starts coming apart, and then you start putting it together differently, and I just thought it would never end. Then when Millennium Films agreed to make the movie, suddenly it went from, “This is never going to happen” to “Oh, we’re making it tomorrow.” That’s been crazy. That’s a big thing for [2017]. It’s gone from this thing that you kind of don’t pay attention to to “Oh shit, we suddenly gotta cast a movie because it’s starting to film in two months.”
The article – part of an exhaustive series about Mignola’s past and present work – goes on to detail what kind of involvement the creator has had with Hellboy 2019. If you’re a Hellboy fan, it’s definitely worth a read.
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