Is Hellboy 3 finally going to happen?

Patience really is a virtue. After almost nine years, it seems like a third and final ‘Hellboy’ movie may finally be a possibility.

Director Guillermo del Toro grabbed the attention of fans earlier this week by launching a poll on Twitter to gauge audience interest in a possible ‘Hellboy 3,’ promising to meet with the two other major players in the franchise – actor Ron Perlman, and the comic book’s creator Mike Mignola – on the condition that the poll received at least 100,000 votes.

Del Toro’s move prompted Perlman to alert his Facebook following, and when the reaction there proved hugely positive, the actor filled his friend in back on Twitter (oh, the tangled web of social media):

Ultimately, the poll garnered just shy of 133,000 votes, which would seem to indicate demand for the film. But will this be enough to finally get ‘Hellboy 3′ in the works?

Del Toro has always said that his adaptation of Mignola’s Dark Horse Comics series was conceived as a trilogy. The 2004 original revealed that ol’ HB, though raised in America to fight on the side of humanity, is prophesied to bring about the end of the world, and the events of 2008’s ‘Hellboy II: The Golden Army’ hinted that he had by accident or design wandered further down that path.

As such, it has always been anticipated that the third and final ‘Hellboy’ movie would see that apocalypse come about; and, given del Toro’s vocal opposition to new US President Trump, it’s perhaps understandable that the Mexican filmmaker is in a somewhat apocalyptic frame of mind right now.

However, funding problems have haunted the series. Neither film performed as well as hoped at the box office, and it was only through sheer tenacity that del Toro was able to get the ‘Hellboy II: The Golden Army’ made, having taken it to Universal when Sony, who produced and distributed the original, passed on the sequel.

While Perlman has long maintained his desire to finish the trilogy, a sentiment seconded by co-stars Doug Jones and Selma Blair, del Toro himself had long since seemed to have lost heart on the matter. The director told The Hollywood Reporter in July 2016, “‘Hellboy 3’ is a wish that will never be fulfilled cause the first two movies made really good profits on a market that doesn’t exist anymore,” arguing that the films were most profitable in DVD and Blu-ray ancillary markets which “now do not exist. It’s very hard to convince a studio when you’ve lost that stream of revenue.”

But as recent years have seen, if you get the internet on your side, that can be enough. Famously, ‘Deadpool’ was trapped in development hell for several years before its 2011 test footage was leaked online and inspired a hugely positive reaction, convincing studio 20th Century Fox to give the movie the green light.

Can ‘Hellboy 3’ follow suit? We wait with bated breath to see how things develop. In the meantime, Guillermo del Toro’s latest film ‘The Shape of Water’ is expected later this year.

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