David Harbour Acknowledges Hellboy Reboot Had Major Problems

David Harbour isn’t blind to the fact that the Hellboy reboot had several issues, though he’s proud of his work. Harbour starred in the titular role of the new film, which released last month to horrendous reviews and even worse box office results. Discussing the film with Digital Spy, Harbour suggested that the competing creative visions resulted in the film that critics and audiences alike disliked (the film has a 16% consensus on Rotten Tomatoes, a a 59% audience score there and a C CinemaScore). Highlights are below:

On where he thought the film went wrong: “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.”

On the film suffering became of comparisons to the MCU: “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 flavour. 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 flavours 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. I think as a rental or as a movie that you see on an aeroplane, 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.”

The film was a box office bomb, bringing in just $21.9 million to date against a $50 million budget and a marketing budget that likely pushed costs into the $125 million range.