Hellboy Trailer: David Harbour Fights the Forces of Darkness

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The trailer for Neil Marshall's R-rated reboot of the Hellboy movie franchise has arrived. Marshall, who is known for directing violent genre films like The Descent and Centurion, takes over here from Guillermo del Toro, who helmed the previous two Hellboy movies. The latter had originally intended to close out his trilogy with Hellboy 3, but his vision was considered too costly by the studio powers that be, and a franchise reboot was ultimately ordered instead.

Stranger Things' David Harbour stars in Marshall's film as Hellboy aka. Big Red, a half-demon who works with the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (BPRD) to protect the world from the forces of darkness. Those who attended the movie's New York Comic Con panel earlier this year were treated to the first Hellboy trailer, complete with clips of the film's various characters. Now, the trailer has released online for everyone to watch.

You can watch the Hellboy trailer below, courtesy of Lionsgate. The reboot was co-written by Hellboy comic book creator Mike Mignola and features Ian McShane (American Gods) as Hellboy's human mentor/father figure Professor Bruttenholm, with Milla Jovovich (Resident Evil) playing the sorceress Nimue aka. The Blood Queen. Sasha Lane (American Honey) also costars here as Alice Monaghan, a woman with magical abilities who was kidnapped by fairies as an infant, and works with Hellboy in the film. Daniel Dae Kim (Hawaii Five-O) rounds out the main cast as Ben Daimio, a seasoned member of the BPRD who butts heads with Big Red and possesses some magical capabilities of his own.

This Hellboy trailer is pretty much the same one that was screened at NYCC, complete with hints of the movie's "more violent and more bloody" nature, as Marshall has described it. The reboot's emphasis on its paranormal horror elements marks a change of pace from del Toro's films, which focused more on the supernatural fantasy aspects of the Hellboy universe. That's not to say del Toro's adaptations were lacking for freaky creatures (far from it - see also, Hellboy II's Tooth Fairies and the Angel of Death), but in general his movies' creatures were misunderstood or misguided more than horrifying. Marshall's reboot, on the other hand, will be more of a true supernatural horror B-movie - though also one with a sense of humor, as the trailer illustrates.

Between its tone and story (which is lifted straight from Mignola's comics) and Harbour's more comic-accurate look as Hellboy (compared to Ron Perlman's design from del Toro's movies), the Hellboy reboot will hew closer to its source material than the previous films ever did. That's probably the best approach for Marshall and Mignola to take here, too. It's futile to try and beat del Toro at his own monster movie game, so better to employ a different strategy, like the one suggested by the Hellboy trailer.

Hellboy (2019) release date: Apr 12, 2019