Lionsgate has released the first image of Stranger Things star David Harbour as Hellboy’s titular demonic lead. An earlier report that the company had set a 2019 release date for the film was false, Lionsgate said.
Unlike the prior film adaptations by Guillermo del Toro, the reboot will be rated R. In August, the character’s creator, Mike Mignola, told The Verge that he was excited to see Game of Thrones director Neil Marshall come on board to helm the project, saying that they “decided to go for an R rating, so he doesn’t have his hands tied, and so he can go as dark and as tough as he wants to go.”
The film recently entered production, and made headlines after actor Ed Skrein was cast and stepped down as Major Ben Daimio, a Japanese-American character from Mike Mignola’s spinoff series B.P.R.D. He said, “representing this character in a culturally accurate way holds significance for people, and that to neglect this responsibility would continue a worrying tendency to obscure ethnic minority stories and voices in the Arts.” He’s since been replaced by Daniel Dae Kim, who recently departed CBS’s Hawaii Five-0 over pay disparities. The film will also feature Ian McShane as Hellboy’s adoptive father Trevor Bruttenholm, and Milla Jovovich as Nimue, the Blood Queen.
In advance of the film, Dark Horse Comics announced that it would be rereleasing its Hellboy comics as a series of six omnibus editions in 2018 and 2019.
Correction, 8:14 p.m.: A previous version of this article linked to a story in Empire reporting that Lionsgate had set a 2019 release date for Hellboy. The article was false, and the movie does not yet have a release date, Lionsgate told The Verge.