“Hellboy: The Crooked Man” went back to the comics for inspiration: 'You don’t think about other movies'

Director Brian Taylor and star Jack Kesy talked about their more ‘intimate’ approach to adapting Mike Mignola’s comic.

There have already been three live-action Hellboy movies, but the cast and crew of Hellboy: The Crooked Man didn’t think about them at all while shooting their upcoming comic book movie.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly at EW’s video studio at Comic-Con 2024, director Brian Taylor (Crank, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance) explained that his only inspiration was Mike Mignola’s original comics. “You don’t think about other movies," the filmmaker said. "Look, the Guillermo [del Toro] movies have a ton of love. People love those movies."

Taylor went on to praise the actor who originated the titular role in del Toro’s films. "Ron Perlman is a legend, love that guy," he said. "He’s a hero as an actor and a human being." But the filmmaker maintained that he only considered the comic source material while crafting The Crooked man. "It’s best when you go into something like this where you’re taking on a character that’s been done before, [and you] don’t think about that stuff at all. I didn’t look back on any of the other movies, I’m sure these guys didn’t either. We read the comic book, and we were like, ‘Let’s try to capture what’s on the page.'"

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Jack Kesy, who is playing the titular demon in the new film, echoed Taylor’s sentiments, stating that Perlman’s performance was “not at all” on his mind while shooting. “You just kinda take what you get; it’s written for you, the costume’s sort of created, you walk into it,” the actor stated. “Fortunately, I find a lot of similarities with that guy [Hellboy] outside the thousand-pound costume, you know. Got to smoke when I wanna smoke. Personalities were kinda similar, and I had a lot of fun with it. You work with what you’re given, and I had a great time doing it.”

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Taylor also explained how The Crooked Man differs from previous cinematic iterations of Hellboy. “It is a different kind of a Hellboy movie, and what we really tried to do was go back to the source material, the original Mike Mignola comic books, which are these amazing pieces of genre, pieces of folk horror, and that’s the kind of Hellboy we wanted to make,” the director said. “We haven’t really seen that on screen yet. I know Mike Mignola hadn’t really seen it on screen yet, so it was really exciting for him, too, to [see] a little more — it’s hard to say ‘grounded,’ about a movie with a guy with sawed-off [horns] and all that, but let’s say it’s a more intimate folk horror take on Hellboy.”

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Elsewhere in the interview, Taylor said that the debut of the movie’s trailer was "terrifying." "This is a weird little movie, and we were out there in Bulgaria doing weird little things,” he explained. "It just kinda seems like a little project we were making out of the derangement of our own hearts and minds, and so when actually you realize, ‘Oh no, actual human beings out there in the world are gonna see this thing,’ it’s kind of a weird, uncomfortable feeling."

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