Hellboy 3 is one of those projects that Guillermo del Toro fans just can’t let go of.  I don’t blame them.  To me, it’s an interesting property that is in many ways perfect for the filmmaker and I think he was just really finding his way into what the big screen version of it wanted to be (which is to say I think Hellboy 2 was at least twice as good as the original film).  But it doesn’t look like it’s in the cards. It's an unfortunate status he’s hinted at for a while, that he feels there just wasn't enough interest to justify the $150 million price tag the film would require.

Steve did an epic interview with del Toro earlier in the week that covered stuff like the Pacific Rim Animated Series At the Mountains of Madness, Crimson Peak and The Strain along with his new Black and White movie.  But today del Toro gave a taste of what Hellboy 3 might have been, despite that fact that it will (probably) never be. Hit the jump for more.

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Image via Universal Pictures

Del Toro divulged the following during a Reddit AMA session:

"Well, you know, we don't have that movie on the horizon, but the idea for it was to have Hellboy finally come 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 the sort of, 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 3rd film. He has to become the best of the Apocalypse to be able to defend humanity, but at the same time he becomes a much darker being. It's a very interesting ending to the series, but I don't think it will happen."

This very much sounds like the external forces against the film haven't shifted that much since last year when he told Collider:

“It’s very unlikely it’ll happen because you need things to converge so strongly.  [Producer] Larry Gordon, Universal,  the rights, Ron [Perlman’s] and mine’s availability, [comic creator] Mike [Mingola’s] blessing; we have pieces of that, but we don’t have all of that.  You need so many things to confluence and then you need about $150 million.”

I'm a little sad because that seems like a fairly epic escalation from the second film and a truly epic way to end the series.  Still, at least we got two good movies out of it.