Guillermo Del Toro’s Ambitious Hellboy 3 Is One Of The Best Movies Never Made

Welcome to The Best Movies Never Made, a look back at the most fascinating, strange, and tantalizing films that never actually made it in front of cameras — and maybe should have.

Guillermo del Toro’s wild, cinematic imagination has led to him being attached to many unrealized projects over the years. It’s a miracle on par with creating life that he finally got to make his dream “Frankenstein” movie. Of all the Del Toro projects that never happened, though — aside from maybe his canceled H.P. Lovecraft adaptation – the one unfulfilled del Toro movie that’s left the biggest hole in fans’ hearts is “Hellboy III.”

Mike Mignola’s Hellboy, a demon summoned to end the world who instead fights to save it, was the perfect superhero for del Toro, who loves monstrous outsiders. Del Toro’s two “Hellboy” movies took the spooky gothic pulp of the comics and added a mile-wide streak of romance to Hellboy (Ron Perlman) and his friends at the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (B.P.R.D.), like fishman Abe Sapien (Doug Jones and David Hyde Pierce) and Stephen King-inspired firestarter Liz Sherman (Selma Blair).

Leading up to the 2008 release of “Hellboy II: The Golden Army,” del Toro made it clear (via IGN) he wanted to do a third movie as his grand finale. Fans spent almost a decade hoping and praying … as del Toro moved onto other projects like “Pacific Rim” and “Crimson Peak.” Almost a decade later, in 2017, del Toro took to Twitter to gauge fan interest in “Hellboy III,” promising to sit down with Mignola and Perlman if the excitement showed. It did, but a month later, del Toro delivered disappointing news:

“‘Hellboy 3’ Sorry to report: Spoke w all parties. Must report that 100% the sequel will not happen. And that is to be the final thing about it.”

In a follow-up tweet, del Toro emphasized he was “Heartbroken — but, not up to me.”

Both Mike Mignola and del Toro were raised Catholic, so how else can “Hellboy” end but in a biblical apocalypse? In a 2015 interview with Empire, Ron Perlman revealed del Toro’s conception for “Hellboy III” was “amazingly theatrical,” “cinematic,” and “f***ed up.” 

“[Hellboy is] the beast of the Apocalypse. He has to take down civilization. He has to. It’s non-negotiable. That’s the foundation for the story.” 

In the comics version, Mignola similarly iterated on Hellboy’s role in an inevitable Ragnarok. Hellboy dies saving England from the witch Nimue, leading into the melancholic epilogue “Hellboy in Hell.” But then Hellboy returned in “B.P.R.D.: The Devil You Know” for an apocalyptic battle and a last sacrifice to birth a new world.

Del Toro’s “Hellboy III” could’ve only had one ending. It sounds like the filmmaker envisioned a bittersweet twist of fate like Mignola ultimately wrote in “The Devil You Know.” The director described the story in a 2014 Reddit AMA like this:

“Hellboy finally [comes] to terms with the fact that his destiny, his inevitable destiny, is to become the beast of the Apocalypse, and having him and Liz face […] that part of his nature, and he has to do it, in order to be able to ironically vanquish the foe that he has to face in the third film. He has to become the beast of the Apocalypse to be able to defend humanity, but at the same time he becomes a much darker being.”

Note how del Toro has Hellboy and Liz facing his destiny together. Del Toro invented a love story between Hellboy and Liz, who were mere friends in the original comics. In del Toro’s first “Hellboy” movie, Grigori Rasputin (Karel Roden) pushes Hellboy to trigger the apocalypse with Liz as a bargaining chip. This romance was an early break between del Toro and Mignola, with more to come.

“Hellboy II’ is hurt a little by the lack of an eventual “Hellboy III” because the sequel included a set-up for a third film – most blatantly in a scrapped post-credits scene in which evil billionaire Roderick Zinco recovers the head of Nazi cyborg Kroenen as a ghostly Rasputin looks on. This explains del Toro’s comments in 2008 that “Hellboy III” would be like “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” with “incredibly rich” villains teamed up with the Nazis.

Del Toro had also considered including other “Hellboy” comic characters in “Hellboy II,” like the ghostly vigilante Lobster Johnson (played by Bruce Campbell) and B.P.R.D. member Roger the Homunculus. Mignola was “protective” of the Lobster, but if he relented, could the character have found his way into “Hellboy III”?

The last scene in “Hellboy II” has Liz reveal she’s pregnant with twins. According to Ron Perlman, del Toro’s plan for “Hellboy III” was that one twin looks human and one looks demonic. One is good, one is evil, and knowing del Toro, the human-looking one would’ve been the bad one. Also, earlier in “Hellboy II,” the Angel of Death (Doug Jones) reminds Liz that if a mortally wounded Hellboy lives, eventually, the seed of destruction will blossom. “Hellboy III” would’ve featured the apocalyptic consequences to Liz’s decision to save her beloved. Prince Nuada (Luke Goss) also warns about the death of the magical world, foreshadowing the approaching destruction of the human one in “Hellboy III.” Nuada tries to convince Hellboy that humans are wiping away the world’s supernatural beauty, and indeed, when Hellboy’s existence is revealed publicly in “Hellboy II,” people reject him.

With the world’s fate on the line in “Hellboy III,” the movie would have certainly revisited this dichotomy. Would “Hellboy III” have seen humankind accept Hellboy as a destructive savior, or would he and Liz have rejected a mortal world that could never understand them?

Ron Perlman said in a 2026 appearance on “The Joe Vulpis Podcast” that “Hellboy III” was never even close to getting off the ground. “People moved on,” he explained, elaborating that these people were “some of the creatives.” 

Perlman has said over the years he isn’t enthused by the idea of going through the extensive makeup process to play Hellboy again, but he thinks the fans are owed an ending. The first two “Hellboy” movies signed a contract still unfulfilled, he says. “I’ll do [‘Hellboy III’] now at 75 years old,” Perlman told Vulpis.

A key reason “Hellboy III” never got closer to reality than hope was its financial prospects. Neither of the first two “Hellboy” movies hit huge at the box office. The first made just shy of $100 million, while the second made about $178 million, and only started to get into big profit via DVD sales. Both movies had similar budgets, of $60 million and $85 million. In fact, “Hellboy” even switched studios between films. The first was distributed by Columbia, but the second hopped ship to Universal Pictures who (according to del Toro) specifically wanted a franchise made on a tighter budget.

For “Hellboy III,” though, del Toro needed a higher budget for his grand design. No studio was willing to front it, especially since the rise of streaming meant the safety net of DVD sales that the first two “Hellboy” movies needed had vanished. 

“The hard fact is that [‘Hellboy III’ is] going to need about $120 million and there’s nobody knocking down our doors to give it to us,” said del Toro in 2015. But is there another reason the film never came together? Which “creatives” was Perlman talking about?

Guillermo del Toro wrote a foreword to the fifth “Hellboy” comic paperback, “Conqueror Worm,” flowing with lavish praise to Mignola. However, he also pointed to differences in their creative visions.

“In discussing the characters with Mike, I suggested that their fascinating, comforting immutability would need to yield to a more three-dimensional dramatic approach,” wrote del Toro. “I say this without a hint of criticism, for we work in parallel but separate arenas.”

Even before del Toro’s announcement in 2017 that “Hellboy III” is 100% dead, Mignola was saying (in a 2013 interview with CBR) that there would be no third movie. The same day that del Toro shared that news, Mignola tweeted that: “No GDT ‘Hellboy 3’ does not mean there is no future to the ‘Hellboy’ franchise.” Mignola is also known to have vetoed del Toro’s suggestion to make a “Hellboy III” comic book, wanting to keep the cinematic and comic Hellboys separate.

In the biographical documentary “Mike Mignola: Drawing Monsters,” Mignola said that while he and del Toro collaborated on the first “Hellboy” movie, there was a “much different dynamic” on the second. “I lost all the battles I fought on ‘Hellboy II,'” Mignola said. “It’s kind of like when your kid grows up and moves away, and you no longer have control over their life.” 

Indeed, while the first “Hellboy” is del Toro trying to stay broadly faithful to Mignola, the sequel is all del Toro. It has an original villain, a more sentimental spirit, and a brighter color palette. Del Toro is a maximalist and romantic, while Mignola is a minimalist and more stoic storyteller (though his writing can pull at your heartstrings, and I speak from experience).

Mike Mignola and del Toro are still on good terms publicly, but reading between the lines suggests Mignola’s dissatisfaction with “The Golden Army” was another roadblock to “Hellboy III.” Mignola has tried to reassert control over the “Hellboy” films ever since. The panned 2019 “Hellboy” reboot and dirt-cheap 2024 “Hellboy: The Crooked Man” promised “Hellboy” movies more faithful to the comics, but only made fans long for del Toro’s trilogy-ender even more.

“Hellboy” (2019) is a strange beast. It directly adapts comic stories and brings in tons of Mignola’s characters, including Nimue, Lobster Johnson, Major Ben Daimo, and the Baba Yaga. Liz doesn’t appear, but comic Hellboy’s love interest Alice Monaghan does. Watching it, you suspect Mignola saw this picture as a launching pad for making his comics into a Marvel Cinematic Universe-style franchise. But the flippant comedy of “Hellboy” (2019) is completely at odds with the eerie and solemn atmosphere of the comics. Mixed with an overstuffed narrative and choppy editing, it crashed and burned. The del Toro duology may be technically less faithful adaptations, but for many “Hellboy” fans, they did a better job honoring the comics than the 2019 movie. 

“The Crooked Man,” a low-key horror movie, did actually capture the tone of the comics. But due to non-existent production values, it still felt like a faint echo of del Toro’s lavish “Hellboy.” It’s honestly a tragic fate in the vein of Hellboy’s own; Mignola wanted to protect his character as he saw him, but only dragged Hellboy down in the process.

Mignola’s “Hellboy” Universe is the greatest shared setting in comics. As different as del Toro’s version could be, it’s a true tragedy he didn’t get to play around in this sandbox one last time.