Lionsgate has released a new image from Neil Marshall’s upcoming reboot of Hellboy. While the R-rated adaptation promises to be different from Guillermo del Toro’s take, it looks like both directors have the character wrestling with his place in the world, especially since his big fist, the Right Hand of Doom, is meant to bring about the end of the world as star David Harbour tells EW:

“It’s not an origin story, but it’s his coming to terms with where he came from,” says Harbour. “He’s been Hellboy for a long time, but there’s a new turn of events at the start of the film, where people start to bring up the fact that he might bring about the end of the world, and it’s really the first time he’s heard anything like that. The question that comes up in the movie is where does he really belong?”

While in the Del Toro movies, Hellboy is firmly on the side of the good guys, it looks like Marshall’s movie will create a little more inner conflict for our hero:

While he’s figuring out how to feel about his human allies, Hellboy is also getting appeals from the monsters to join their side. This ongoing existential crisis opens Hellboy’s mind to the arguments of Nimue the Blood Queen (Milla Jovovich), a powerful witch who’s angry about what humans have done to her kind. This Hellboy film is adapted from the three-part comic saga written by Hellboy creator Mike Mignola and illustrated by Duncan Fegredo (comprising the separate miniseries Darkness Calls, The Wild Hunt, and The Storm and the Fury), in which Nimue was the grand villain. The film will show us some of the reasoning behind her actions.

 

“We really three-dimensionalized her in the movie,” Harbour says. “She was brought up in a culture that treated her kind a certain way, and it wasn’t always deserving. That’s the point that becomes compelling to Hellboy and spins his head around.”

The first trailer for the film arrives tomorrow, and I’m definitely curious to see what Marshall has in store the character.

Check out the image below, which features Harbour as Hellboy alongside Sasha Lane as Alice Monaghan and Daniel Dae Kim as Major Ben Daimio. Hellboy opens April 12, 2019.

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Image via Lionsgate

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