Charlie Ridgely is a writer from Maryland, currently residing in Nashville, Tennessee. He may be new to Collider, but he's been writing, editing, conducting interviews, and podcasting around the industry for 10 years. From 2016 to the start of 2026, Charlie was a full time writer and critic at ComicBook.com. A lifelong movie fan, avid reader, and renowned (fictional) dungeon explorer/dragonslayer, Charlie is a jack-of-all-trades throughout the fandom multiverse and has covered everything under the sun. 

Despite known IP being all the rage in the studio system right now, reboots are far from a sure thing when it comes to box office success — or fan reaction, for that matter. Some reboots or legacy sequels have broken through and become monumental success stories, such as The Batman, Dredd, or Mad Max: Fury Road. Most reboots, however, tend to fall by the wayside shortly after their release, though a few have failed so magnificently that they're remembered for all the wrong reasons.

That is unfortunately the case for Lionsgate's 2019 attempt at bringing Mike Mignola's iconic Dark Horse Comics character Hellboy back to the big screen. The Descent director Neil Marshall teamed with Stranger Things star David Harbour for this new Hellboy and, on paper, it felt like all the pieces were in place to make a good adaptation. But between on-set issues and interference from executives, the 2019 Hellboy crashed and burned in spectacular fashion, and frustrated a ton of fans in the process.

'Hellboy' Really Missed the Mark

This new take on Hellboy should've worked, given who all was involved and the timing of the release. Harbour was smack in the middle of Stranger Things and as big of a star as he'd ever been, not to mention the fact that he possesses that same gruff-but-endearing quality as previous Hellboy star Ron Perlman. Marshall had directed acclaimed horror films like The Descent and Dog Soldiers, before helming a couple of all-time great episodes of Game of Thrones. He had the perfect blend of horror and fantasy experience to make Hellboy work. When you take those two and surround them with a supporting cast that includes Milla Jovovich and Ian McShane, Lionsgate had a recipe for success.

That recipe, however, didn't translate to anything meaningful on-screen. The great individual parts never actually came together to create a substantial final product. Even the film's desire to get back to the roots of Mignola's comics, straying from the more blockbuster approach of Guillermo del Toro's movies, felt empty once Hellboy hit theaters. There was certainly a lot of horror present in the reboot, but it was only a mask being worn by a film that clearly fell into the franchise and blockbuster trappings of most modern IP projects.

Despite some solid performances, Hellboy is formulaic at best, and hard-to-watch at its worst. A lot of the CGI already looks dated, the narrative is at times incoherent, and most of its "big" moments just fall flat and lifeless. For a character as iconic as Hellboy, it's disheartening that this is what we ended up with, especially when you consider the alternative.

Still No 'Hellboy 3'

It may be unfair to Marshall, Harbour, and the rest of the Hellboy reboot team, but the reality is that anything that movie did would instantly be compared to Del Toro's work with Hellboy and Hellboy II: The Golden Army. Those movies weren't as faithful to the comics as some fans would have liked, but they were excellent movies nonetheless, and they set the standard for Hellboy on the big screen. Anything short of the quality of those first two films would have a hard time winning over the Hellboy faithful.

Making matters worse is the fact that the cries for a third Hellboy movie from that team haven't ever quieted down. Del Toro and Perlman both expressed interest in completing the trilogy (so long as the other was also involved), but that never came to fruition. Instead, Lionsgate rebooted the project without any of them, and this box office misfire is the result.

The 2019 Hellboy movie made just over $55 million at the box office, which is awful considering its $50 million production budget. In the years since, it hasn't exactly caught on as a cult-favorite or anything like that, though it does have a handful of fans out there willing to argue that it's underrated. This month saw Hellboy get added to Netflix's streaming roster in the United States, providing another opportunity for it to find an audience. So far, however, it doesn't appear to be moving the needle.