Ron Perlman wants to complete the original Hellboy trilogy - even if he's 86.
The 76-year-old actor portrayed the titular superpowered paranormal investigator in the original live-action films (2004's Hellboy and 2008's Hellboy II: The Golden Army) - and he insists he will only return to the franchise to create the third film that was intended by Guillermo del Toro.
He told Deadline: "I’ve said so much about this and p***** off enough people, but I’ll say it again for you: the original movies were meant to be a trilogy. In Hellboy II, we left off at a very awkward moment where the Liz Sherman character is pregnant with twins, and none of the promises of Hellboy being summoned into existence to destroy the world has been addressed. That would all have been in the third film, and I’ll always advocate for the making of the third film. I’m not interested in doing any other version of Hellboy other than finishing the trilogy with Guillermo [del Toro]. It would be so epic. Like a Greek epic. Hubris, hamartia, destiny, nature vs. nurture, it would be such an adventure. I’m 76 now, and if he comes to me and I’m 86, we’ll still do the motherf*****."
The two reboots that followed were 2019's Hellboy, helmed by Neil Marshall, and the 2024 Brian Taylor-directed Hellboy: The Crooked Man.
Stranger Things star David Harbour portrayed the demonic hero in the first reboot and Jack Kesy in the second. Both movies were savaged by critics and bombed at the box office.
A third film in the original trilogy based on the Dark Horse Comics character was scrapped due to a lack of funding.
David previously admitted he can see why his Hellboy was a bad idea because audiences simply cherished Guillermo's films too much to give his film a chance.
Speaking on Instagram Live in 2020, he said: "I think it failed before we began shooting because I think that people didn't want us to make the movie and for some reason that we thought could be reinvented and then they certainly - the loudness of the internet was like, 'We do not want you to touch this.'
"And then we made a movie that I think is fun and I think had its problems but was a fun movie and then people were just very against it and that's people's right but I learned my lesson in a lot of different ways."