Ketchup Entertainment’s Hellboy: The Crooked Man is set to be the live action franchise’s first full-on horror movie, with Jack Kesy (12 Strong) taking over the title role.
Total Film has shared a brand new preview piece this week that features two new images of Jack Kesy as Hellboy, along with some fresh insights from director Brian Taylor.
For starters, The Crooked Man is diving back into the original source material.
Taylor tells the outlet, “I don’t think in terms of ‘it’s a reboot’ or trying to start a new franchise – this isn’t content, it’s a movie that needs to stand on its own. Nobody wants to see a cheap knock-off of a Guillermo del Toro $100-million movie. This is going back to the young Hellboy where he was really more of the plumber who’s going to fix your monster problem. This wandering, sarcastic, soulful, smoking guy who stumbles on supernatural hauntings and occurrences and helps out as best he can.”
“If [Hellboy creator] Mike [Mignola] feels like for the first time he sees his guy on screen, then I feel like we’ve succeeded,” Taylor adds.
Speaking of which, Mike Mignola co-wrote the new Hellboy film with Christopher Golden.
Hellboy: The Crooked Man, which doesn’t yet have a release date, is “set in the 1950s and costars Adeline Rudolph (Resident Evil) as a rookie agent of the BPRD (the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense) who teams up with Hellboy to protect the residents of Appalachia from the creepy Crooked Man, who is collecting souls for the devil.”
Brian Taylor (Crank, Gamer, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, Mom and Dad) directed the movie for Millennium, based on a Hellboy mini-series from 2008. The story is said to “expand Hellboy’s world through one of the most beloved issues of the comic series.”
Jefferson White (Yellowstone) stars alongside Kesy and Rudolph as Tom Ferrel, Leah McNamara as Effie Kolb, Joseph Marcell as Reverend Watts, Hannah Margetson as Cora Fisher, and Martin Bassindale as the Crooked Man, among others.
“The Crooked Man is a departure from all previous Hellboy films where Mike Mignola and the creator of the comics will finally shepherd an authentic version of his stories and characters in film form,” said Millennium Media’s President Jeffrey Greenstein. “This is the first in the series of films that will captivate audiences in familiar (and new) ways. Brian Taylor is an expert across the board, and I couldn’t think of a better person to bring this story to life to show our audience this different and original Hellboy slate of films.”
Millennium Media is producing the new movie alongside Dark Horse Entertainment.