Ron Perlman Wouldn’t Want A Crowd-funded Hellboy 3

Erstwhile Hellboy actor Ron Perlman says he has been blown away by the response to his online campaigning for a third film based on Mike Mignola’s comic book series - but rules out the possibility of making it via crowd-funding.

The 65 year old actor played the role for director Guillermo del Toro in the 2004 original and its 2008 sequel ‘Hellboy II: The Golden Army,’ which were always intended as segments of a trilogy - but the commercial under-performance of both films seems to have scuppered any chance of a third film. On top of which, del Toro himself seems content to let it go.

However, Perlman has always voiced his desire to complete the trilogy, and his recent posts to Facebook and Twitter on the subject garnered huge fan support, plus that of his co-stars Selma Blair (firestarter Liz Sherman) and Doug Jones (fishman Abe Sapien).

- Ron Perlman Pushes For Third Hellboy
- Studio May Sell The Crow Reboot
- Ghostbusters Reboot Plot Details

Perlman tells Digital Spy, “I was very, very surprised [by the reaction]. I just sent it out like I send out most of my tweets. just as a goof, and this started off a week’s worth of incredible feedback and enthusiasm and passion, which kind of surprised me and humbled me. And it’s still going.”

Asked whether this fan support could be put into a crowd-funding campaign - i.e. raising money from fan donations via a site such as Kickstarter - Perlman was considerably less keen.

“I wouldn’t want to be involved in a crowd-funding [campaign]. I don’t think it’s a fan’s job to fund the movie, I think it’s up to the people who do it professionally. I think it’s the fan’s job to watch the movie, buy popcorn and Coke, and enjoy it.”

This is a rather different attitude than some other established artists have displayed in recent years, with Zach Braff and Spike Lee causing some controversy by using Kickstarter to fund their most recent films, and the ‘Veronica Mars’ movie largely getting made thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign.

In any case, we’d have to question how suitable an approach it would be for ‘Hellboy III’ anyway, given that the budget would surely have to be upwards of $100 million - and to date the most any film has raised via crowd-funding is $4.5 million (the ongoing Indiegogo campaign for ‘Super Troopers 2′). Even if ‘Hellboy III’ only sought to raise a portion of its budget from fans, it might still be a tad unrealistic.

Perlman went on to explain what the essential plot of ‘Hellboy III’ would entail, and it most definitely sounds exciting for fans of the first two:

“‘Hellboy III’ was designed to resolve the dilemna of whether the beast of the apocalypse was in fact going to live up to his oracle, his destiny, of destroying mankind, or whether the beast we’ve seen nurtured over the years, who’s taken all his immense superpower and used it in the opposite way - to protect mankind - which one will out.

“But the destiny part of it is irreversible and non-negotiable. So something rather dramatic has to happen in the third movie to find out which Hellboy prevails.”

That’s a movie we know we’d like to see - and as Perlman remarks, if it’s going to happen it needs to be “sooner rather than later,” as the actor drolly remarks, “I’m getting to that age where if I wait much longer then ‘Hellboy III’ will be performed out of a wheelchair.”

- Maleficent Sequel In Development
- Roth To Direct Giant Shark Movie
- Director & Title Confirmed For Halloween Reboot

Picture Credit: Universal, WENN