Hellboy Is Back With The Reboot’s First Trailer

Mike Mignola’s Hellboy had a couple of movies in the 2000s, back before the Superhero Movie Boom took over everything. Back then, only two-thirds of all movies were based on comic books, not 94 percent. Seems so long ago.

For whatever reason, we never got a third flick with Ron Perlman in the big red suit. But David Harbour, aka Sheriff Hopper from Stranger Things, has taken up the charge as the lone demon on humanity’s side, kicking monsters around for the forces of good.

For months, all we’ve known about the Hellboy reboot is that it was supposed to be “grittier” than the previous two movies. Nothing about this trailer suggests that. Director Neil Marshall has said over and over in interviews that this will be the “dark and serious” Hellboy movie, despite the fact that no one really wants that. They want the wisecracking, one-liner-slinging tough guy from the comics, not a miserable moper.

This trailer represents either a big change of mind on Marshall’s side, or a massive editing job by the marketing department, because this Hellboy sure doesn’t come off as “gritty” to us. There are plenty of crazy moments here — which leaves us optimistic, assuming it isn’t all a lie.

The new Hellboy will be out April 12, 2019.