Hellboy Reboot Problems Pushed Marvel Star To Seek Help To Save $55M Flop

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David Harbour's Hellboy standing inside with old portraits on the wall and old statues on display

Published Jun 13, 2026, 2:08 PM EDT

Adam has been writing in the entertainment news space for over a decade. Beginning his career of covering film and TV at CinemaBlend, he has also appeared on The Flash Podcast and done several radio spots.

Hellboy star David Harbour took it upon himself to seek outside help to save the troubled movie.

In 2019, eleven years after Hellboy II: The Golden Army, the popular Dark Horse Comics property was rebooted, with Harbour succeeding Ron Perlman in the title role. Unlike the original Hellboy and its sequel, this reboot earned primarily negative critical reception. Additionally, the production itself was plagued with issues, and Harbour has now revealed what he did to try to improve the adaptation.

The actor recalled to Variety that as Hellboy was filming, he got in contact with some writers he was friendly with to help him punch up the script, even though that wasn’t strictly legal. In his words:

I was really trying real hard to bring something to this movie. Had a bunch of writer buddies in LA. This is probably illegal from the, like, DGWG something union, and I used to just send them scenes and just be like, "Help me save this movie. Just write me some funny one-liners.” And they did.

Harbour shared this anecdote while correctly guessing that the line of dialogue, “My cage? My cage! I’m gonna specifically ask that you clean my sawdust. Can’t wait until you smell demon shit, pal!” came from Hellboy. However, he didn’t clarify whether this was among the one-liners that his writer friends came up with or if it was already in the script.

Though Boom! Studios co-founder Andrew Cosby worked on the reboot’s script with Hellboy creator Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden, only Cosby received formal screenwriting credit.

Based on the “Darkness Calls,” “The Wild Hunt,” “The Storm and the Fury,” and “Hellboy in Mexico” story arcs from the Hellboy comics, the 2019 movie saw Harbour’s version clashing with a resurrected sorceress from the Dark Ages known as Vivienne Nimue, the Blood Queen, played by Milla Jovovich. They were joined in the cast by Ian McShane as Professor Trevor Bruttenholm, Sasha Lane as Alice Monaghan, and Daniel Dae Kim as Ben Daimio, among others. Neil Marshall directed the reboot.

The ending of Hellboy laid the groundwork for a potential sequel by teasing Abe Sapien and showing Baba Yaga task an unseen character to track down the crimson-shaded agent of the B.P.R.D. However, the poor reactions to the reboot, along with only making $55 million worldwide off a reported $50 million budget, nixed those plans. ScreenRant’s Hellboy review described the movie as “a surprisingly boring superhero epic that drags between sequences of fantasy action spectacle.”

In 2020, Harbour blamed its failure on the high expectations from the fans of Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy movies. Three years later, the actor joked that he keeps a framed photo of himself as Hellboy in his closet because “whenever I'm feeling particularly good about myself, I like to always remember where I came from.” In 2024, Marshall said Hellboy would never be his “favorite film” from his body of work, and that it’s difficult for him to “disassociate the experience of making it with the finished product.”

Five years after the release of David Harbour’s Hellboy, another reboot came out called Hellboy: The Crooked Man. Although the Jack Kesy-led movie earned a slightly better critical reception than its predecessor, it was a commercial flop. Harbour has since transitioned to the Marvel Cinematic Universe to play Red Guardian, whom he’ll reprise in December for Avengers: Doomsday.