‘Hellboy Rise of the Blood Queen’ headed to Lionsgate, starring David Harbour, filming in the fall
A Hellboy reboot is underway with Neil Marshall (The Descent) set to direct David Harbour (Stranger Things) in a new adaptation of Mike Mingola’s supernatural investigator.
The reboot, titled Hellboy: Rise of the Blood Queen, had been looking for a home, and now it looks like it has found one with Lionsgate.
According to Splash Report and confirmed by THR, the R-rated comic book film has been picked up by Lionsgate, with some negotiations still ongoing, likely having to manage the cost of the project.
Lionsgate has been behind fan favorites John Wick and Crank as well as R-rated superhero film Punisher: War Zone.
The first Hellboy was made by Revolution Studios and released by Sony back in 2004 starring Ron Perlman in the title role. The sequel, 2008’s Hellboy: The Golden Army, was made by Relativity Media and distributed by Universal Pictures.
Neither film was a massive success at the box office, the first movie did well enough on home video to get Universal to bite on the sequel. Unfortunately, that home video market has now dried up, and so no studio was willing to greenlight the version of Hellboy III that original director Guillermo Del Toro wanted because they didn’t see how it could recoup its investment.
Hellboy already has its comic book fans, but in order to make the franchise more successful than Del Toro’s movies, Lionsgate will have to appeal to people that weren’t interested before.
Filming on Hellboy: Rise of the Blood Queen is slated to begin this fall.
