Hellboy has been played by three actors in live-action form at this stage, but for the majority of fans, Ron Perlman's take on the cigar-chomping demon simply won't be bettered.
Perlman has been asked about potentially reprising the role on a number of occasions over the years, and always suggested that his days taking down monsters with the Right Hand of Doom are well behind him. However, it sounds like the actor could still be convinced to don the prosthetics again... under one condition.
While speaking to The Hashtag Show on the red carpet of this year's Saturn Awards, Perlman was asked if he might be interested in playing Hellboy again: "For Guillermo, I would."
"I had an opportunity to play him for other people and I passed," he added. "That's his franchise as far as I'm concerned – and I'm his boy."
Perlman is, of course, referring to Guillermo del Toro, who helmed the first movie and its sequel, The Golden Army. As for these "other people," it's been previously reported that Perlman was approached to play the title character in the 2019 movie prior to David Harbour signing on.
Is there a chance Del Toro might return to direct a third Hellboy movie some day? Given how poorly the last two adaptations have been received critically and commercially, we would be surprised if the filmmaker has been approached, but whether he'd actually be tempted to take the helm is another matter.
Here's what Hellboy creator Mike Mignola had to say about the possibility of working with Del Toro on a third movie during a 2024 interview with Screen Rant.
"Being able to look back now, I'm very happy about the time I spent with him. We had some adventures, and I just think we've both moved on in different directions. When you work on movies, especially if you're on the movie set, there's so much intensity day in, day out with these people — with the actors, with the director — and then when it's over, it's just over. It's a very strange feeling [where] you just go, 'I thought we were friends for life, but I’ll never actually see you again,' and, unfortunately, I think that's kind of where del Toro and I are. He's just on another planet. I'm very glad I got to know him and work with him back when working on a movie was five or six guys, and not the career he has now. But we still speak or email occasionally."