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SYFY WIRE Hellboy

Hellboy star David Harbour admits reboot 'has serious problems'

By Josh Weiss
Hellboy 2019

After more than 10 years away from the big screen, Mike Mignola's Hellboy returned to theaters in a shiny new reboot film with David Harbour (Stranger Things) in the titular role. Sadly, things did not go as expected and the feature helmed by Neil Marshall (The Descent, Game of Thrones) tanked with critics and at the box office, making less than $22 million during its run in North America.

With a little more than a month having passed since the movie first opened to the public, Harbour broke his silence on the project's underwhelming performance.

"We did our best, but there's so many voices that go into these things and they're not always going to work out. I did what I could do and I feel proud of what I did, but ultimately I'm not in control of a lot of those things," the actor told Digital Spy.

Harbour went on to offer his theory on why the film ultimately failed, discussing the omnipotence of Marvel, which recently shattered all fan, critic, and box office expectations with the debut of Avengers: Endgame.

"The problem that I have with comic book movies nowadays is that I think, and it's a result of the power of Marvel stuff, it's like chocolate, it's a flavor," he continued. "So everybody goes chocolate is delicious and these guys make the best chocolate. So as you judge the movies, it's like, 'Well it's not as chocolatey as this, this does not taste like chocolate at all.' And I sort of want a world where there's more flavors than just comparisons to chocolate. So in that way when Hellboy is viewed on the chocolate spectrum, it does very poorly. That being said, it also has major problems."

If you didn't catch the movie in theaters, Hellboy is expected to hit digital platforms and physical home video sometime over the summer. In this regard, Harbour hopes the picture can receive a sort of second opinion when it becomes even more widely available to watch.

"I think as a rental or as a movie that you see on an airplane, I think you'd be like, 'Oh, that was fun,' because it's a fun movie, and I think it was unfairly bludgeoned as a result of these comparisons," he finished.