I guess we should be glad that Hellboy wasn’t offered to Fox TV. The efforts by the studios to tinker with the Hellboy story read like a classic example of Things Man Was Not Meant To Tinker With.
“An executive said to me, ‘What about a regular actor who gets angry and turns into Hellboy?’ ” said del Toro, wrinkling his face in disgust. “I go, ‘That’s … not … very good.
“Then they would say, ‘What if you call him Hellboy and he comes from Hell and all that, but he looks like a guy?’ Then they would suggest things like, ‘Can he have a Hellmobile?’ ‘Can he have a dog? A pet dog that comes from hell and is red?’
[…] “It went through every permutation. I had studios where I would start a meeting, and they would say, ‘You’re not making him red are you?’ And I go, ‘Yeah, he’s red.’ ‘You’re not doing the tail are you?’ ‘Yes, I’m doing the tail.’ ‘You’re not doing the horns? ‘Yes, I’m doing the horns.’ “
Here was fear underlying those questions: What good is a movie star like The Rock, Nicolas Cage or Vin Diesel if he’s obscured under the heavy makeup and prosthetics necessary to recreate the comic-book version of Hellboy?
[…] “The thing I told studios again and again, and this is something that demonstrates how Hollywood thinks, I said to them, ‘If I told you Hellboy was a $30 million (computer-animated) character, you guys would be happy. But if I tell you this is the right actor, you’re not.’ What an obscene contradiction.”
In some ways, making the story at all was Del Toro’s greatest achievement of all.
(via Doyce)
One of these day’s you’ll watch “An evening with Kevin Smith” and this stuff will seem like old hat…Or at least like I, Robot .
Superman 2006 baby!
It’s all about the giant spiders, baby!