In our recent chat with Mike Mignola, the director talked about the business side in terms protecting material, how the success affects him, and future projects.
In 'Hellboy 2: The Golden Army,' the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense is joined by Johann Krauss, a disembodied ectoplasmic spirit with psychic abilities who maintains a tangible form via a containment suit. When the execution of the character looked costly, there was talk of using another "Hellboy" character Lobster Johnson in his place.
Mignola explained, "I did get a call from Guillermo saying let's use Lobster Johnson instead, and I said the trouble is you've written a story for a character who's a medium, and I don't want you to take Lobster Johnson and turn him into a different character just to fit – it's like saying, well this part was written for Superman, but we can't get Superman, so we're going to use Batman. It's a different guy. You can't swap 'em out. So that was the one place where I said, 'You know, I'd really rather you didn't.'
"And I did get one call from a producer saying, 'Well, I hear that you're being difficult,' and I was like, it just doesn't make sense. So fortunately they did find a way to do it with Johan and immediately Lobster Johnson went with so many other things into the third film, so it was like everything we didn't get to put into the second film is in the third film."
Talk of a third film created an almost Pavlovian response in some journalists, causing them to quickly follow up. All Mignola could tell them was, "If Guillermo puts everything in the third film that he says he's going to put in the third film, it's about 180 hours long. There's a lot of stuff, I mean I've heard a dozen different versions of what the third film is.
However del Toro is going to be off working on 'The Hobbit' for at least five years, so he will be unavailable for 'Hellboy III,' if the studio wants it done quickly. Mignola was asked about his thoughts on another writer and/or director stepping in.
"Fortunately, that's not my decision. It's not like they have to come back to me really, and say, 'Hey can we have your characters?' They've got the characters, but the big question is – what happens, and I don't know. It's going to make the next couple of months very interesting, because five years is a long time to be gone, and if 'Hellboy II' is as successful as we hope, Universal may want to get moving with that much faster, I don't know what's going to happen there."
In regards to the films affect on books sales, it was interesting to learn that "in the short term around the period of the film, there's a huge bump in sales, and then it settles back down, but I think the overall effect is certainly very beneficial to the comic. You just – the films have put that character on the map. I mean, we were doing okay before, but given the way comics sell, would I still be able to do 'Hellboy' had there never be a film? I don't know, I mean I do have to feed my family and I hate to think I would have had to crawl back to Marvel or DC and do fill in issues of whatever, that's still my greatest fear is oh god, what if I have to wake up some day and someone says, we can get you a fill in issue of the 'Teen Titans,' that's about the best we can do. I'm like, 'Oh no!' I want to do my own thing, so the film has certainly made things a lot easier.
"I grew up reading Marvel comics and there are a lot of characters there I love, but they don't really exist the way I remember them, so the comic book fan part of me doesn't have this burning desire to do anything there. And also I've got so much of my own stuff and as I get older, I realize man, I just don't have the time. I hope I have the time to do all the 'Hellboy' stuff I want to do and the 'Hellboy'-related stuff I want to do. There's just not enough leftover time to also do 'Batman' or anything else."
In regards to other 'Hellboy' projects, they "had written a third animated film, which they pulled the rug out on that, so with the success of 'Hellboy II,' maybe the animation thing will come back to life."
A BPRD spinoff has "been mentioned once or twice. I've never had a serious conversation with anybody about it. I would be very interested to hear anything that anybody wants to do." But the BPRD books are continuing. They "just did a BPRD 1946, we're working on a BPRD 1947."
With so many irons in the fire it led to the question of why Mignola thinks 'Hellboy' appeals so much to fans?
"You know, that's always going to be the hardest kind of question for me to answer because I just write it, I just make it up, so the fact that it works, I have no idea. Maybe it's because he's a guy and he's always been, we approach him like a person and we don't approach him like a superhero so I think he might be a little bit more accessible. I know for the comic, one thing, after 15 years of doing comics before "Hellboy," doing "Batman" and "X-Men" and things like that, suddenly I had women reading the comic and I think that's because even though he's red and he has a tail, he was written like a guy, I mean I didn't know how to write a superhero. I had never written before so the only way I knew how to write that character was what would I say and what would I do, and, yeah, he's the beast of the apocalypse but I've always kind of treated him like – what would I do in that situation."
'Hellboy II: The Golden Army' opens in theaters today.
LOGIN
REGISTER
RSS
HOME
