The action in Mike Mignola’s original Hellboy comics was typically more about being stylish than being graphic, which Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation leaned on with its fantastical aesthetic, but Neil Marshall’s new Hellboy movie is going to cut the shit and just drape itself in all the gore you’d expect a monster-hunting demon baby to regularly encounter. The movie is going for an R-rating, and Marshall recently told Empire that he’s embracing the freedom that the R-rating grants him by going “more violent and more bloody.” He says he’s not “making it with handcuffs on,” so he can go all out and—in theory—create the ultimate Hellboy movie.
We previously heard that the new Hellboy would be more of a horror film than the previous versions, with Empire even implying that David Harbour’s take on Hellboy himself will lack some of the chumminess that Ron Perlman brought to the role. Violence is great and all, but hopefully Marshall doesn’t miss the fact that Mignola’s Hellboy comics are often pretty silly. After all, arguably the greatest moment in any Hellboy comic is when kid Hellboy eats pancakes for the first time, and there was very little blood in that story.
Anyway, Empire also has a new image of Harbour’s Hellboy, but you’ll have to click that link to see it.