One of the current "dream projects" for fans is Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy 3. While there is a desire on the part of the creative minds to make the film, there seems to be little interest from the holders of the purse strings to finance it. However, it seems there may be something that could get Legendary Pictures to pony up the cash for a new Hellboy. Lots of money from Pacific Rim 2.
According to The Daily Beast, Legendary has told del Toro that if his mechs fighting giant monsters sequel is a hit they might be willing to go in for the third Hellboy flick. Del Toro estimates he needs $120 million to make it work, which he calls "a little beyond Kickstarter." He’s right about that of course, as most film Kickstarter’s look for a couple million. Still, wouldn’t you love to see how close they could get? While this is far from a guarantee on the side of the production company, its the closest we’ve ever seen on the production side to something approaching interest in years. In was 2013 when Legendary’s CEO said he would "love to see" Hellboy 3.
We know one person who is on board if the sequel does come through is Hellboy himself Ron Perlman. The actor has been (over?)zealous in his drive to stir up fan support in order to get studio attention. He really wants to make the movie. We’d call it better than average odds that Perlman will reprise his role from Pacific Rim for that sequel as well, so now he’s got incentive to put in one hell of a performance.
While this possibility for a new Hellboy still looks like a longshot, it actually makes the threequel look closer than ever before. Everything we’ve ever heard from del Toro was that nobody wanted to fund the movie, period. While we don’t expect Legendary to trip over themselves greenlighting the film, even if Pacific Rim 2 puts up Furious 7 numbers, the movie has certainly shifted from the "impossible" category, over to "highly improbable." It’s a step in the right direction, just not a big one.
The first two Hellboy films were successful, even if they weren’t runaway hits, so putting up the funds for a third is not a major financial risk on the part of Legendary. So many of del Toro’s projects have so much promise, but then end up fading away never seeing the light of day. We hope that doesn’t happen here.
We were already looking forward to Pacific Rim 2 if only for a good time of monsters fighting robots at the movies. Now that there’s a bit more pressure on, we’re just hoping it will be good enough to see twice.
