Guillermo Del Toro Asks for, and Receives, 100,000 Twitter Votes to Pursue 'Hellboy 3' — So, Now What?

To make 2008’s Hellboy II: The Golden Army — the sequel to 2004’s original Hellboy — Guillermo del Toro had to move the franchise from Columbia Pictures to Universal Pictures. That transition was a relatively smooth and successful one, as The Golden Army eventually grossed $160 million worldwide. And yet in the nine years since, the Pan’s Labyrinth and Pacific Rim director has failed to get a third installment in the series — based on the comics of Mike Mignola, about a grumpy, superpowered demon working for the U.S. government — off the ground.

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Undeterred by this lack of progress, del Toro took to Twitter yesterday to gauge fans’ interest in a Hellboy 3 — with the promise that, if 100,000 people voted “yes” to a three-quel, he’d promise to have a serious sit down with both Mignola and series star Ron Perlman about trying to reignite the project.

Sure enough, Twitter users wasted no time making it clear they craved a Hellboy 3, leading Del Toro to restate his commitment to follow through on his part of the online bargain:

That’s certainly encouraging news, although recent history suggests that any such anticipation about Hellboy 3 should be accompanied by a dose of skepticism. As far back as 2012, both Del Toro and Perlman — after the latter visited a sick fan in full Hellboy makeup — made it clear that they were interested in wrapping up their saga with a final chapter.

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Two years later, however, Del Toro said in a Reddit AMA that the movie was not going to happen:

“…we have gone through basically every studio and asked for financing, and they are not interested. 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. The story repeated itself with the second already, it made its money back at the box office, but a small margin of profit in the release of the theatrical print, but was very very big on DVD and video. Sadly now from a business point of view all the studios know is that you don’t have that safety net of the DVD and video, so they view the project as dangerous.

“Creatively, I would love to make it. Creatively. But it is proven almost impossible to finance. Not from MY side, but from the studio side. If I was a multimillionaire, I would finance it myself, but I spend all my money on rubber monsters.”

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Jeffrey Tambor revived hopes, if only slightly, in 2014. While making the rounds for his Amazon TV series Transparent, he confessed that “There is actually talk of a Hellboy 3, but they better hurry or I’m going to be in a walker.” Unfortunately, Perlman himself shot down such ideas late last year at New York Comic-Con, when, per Screen Rant, he admitted, “We don’t talk about that anymore. Because he’s busy, and I’m busy. Maybe one day he’s going to call and say, ‘Hey, let’s do it.’ But for right now? We’re happy discovering new worlds to conquer.”

Is Perlman getting too old to handle the physical aspects of the role? Are studios wary of Del Toro’s asking price? Or, following this Twitter poll, can the director, actor, and series creator finally find a way to make Hellboy 3 actually happen? Only time, it seems, will tell if the franchise can escape purgatory…

Watch: Ron Perlman Casts Doubt on Third ‘Hellboy’ Movie