Guillermo del Toro and Ron Perlman Discuss Hellboy 3 at Comic-Con; del Toro Hopeful for At the Mountains of Madness
Posted 07.22.11 by Ryan
To make Hellboy 3, or not to make Hellboy 3: that is the question. And the answer continues to change.
Last August, director Guillermo del Toro said he faced a major obstacle in convincing actor Ron Perlman to spend " six hours [in the makeup chair]". Months later, he said the sequel, basically, was never going to happen.
However, echoing comments he made in January, Perlman told a FilmDistrict panel at the San Diego Comic-Con that he would be ready to put the make-up back on.
[Hellboy II: The Golden Army] was tough. Both of us walked away from that a little bit, "Do I ever want to revisit this?" But then with the luxury of time and looking at it in an objectified way... We were beat up at the end of it... He always looked at it as a trilogy and there were things that were unresolved. So for us to not make it would be letting down people who invested in the first two. It's epic what he wants to do, but it would be cinematic and well worth doing.
But the "epic-ness" of a third Hellboy may be what makes it so difficult to make, at least according to del Toro .
The reality is this: Each of those movies has been an incredible ordeal to make. The first one, it was an $85-90 million dollar movie and we did it for $50 [million] because we wanted a red guy, nobody wanted a blue guy, nobody wanted this crazy little idea. The second movie, it was a $150 million dollar movie that we did for $80 [million]. Very difficult, had to fight for every little thing that made them quirky. The third one is the hardest one because it's the darkest one and doesn't necessarily have a happy ending. So to go and say, "Am I going to be able to make it before Ron is 71?" I don't know. And, by the same token, if it's not Ron, I don't want to make it. Somebody else can reboot the franchise, make it different, God bless, but if you do the epic ending — the third one is epic, it's gigantic.
While del Toro's next movie is Pacific Rim, he's still holding out hope he can return to At the Mountains of Madness, his adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft story that Universal Pictures canceled in March, despite the efforts of del Toro and producer James Cameron, as well as the casting of Tom Cruise in the lead role.
It's very easy from the outside to say, "Oh, he changed his mind." It's not that. You work your ass off for months for something fans are never going to see. I only do things that I truly love. If I control the property, I hold onto it for decades. If I don't control it, it goes away. I carried [the del toro–produced] Don't Be Afraid of the Dark for 13 years. I carried Hellboy for almost 8 years before it got made. I'll still carry [At the Mountains] until it gets made, if it can get made.
