HELLBOY Reboot Director Neil Marshall Talks About Its Practical Effects and R-Rating

Neil Marshall has some ambitious plans for his upcoming Hellboy reboot, Hellboy: Rise of the Blood Queen. During an interview on the Post Mortem podcast, he talks about his desire to use practical effects for the film and explains why the film will be rated R.

“It’s definitely going to be as practical as we can possibly make it. I love to do stuff in camera whenever I possibly can, and use CG as the amazing tool that it is, to enhance or expand upon the world, but not to use it to replace reality, when you can do it [for] real.”

If you've ever seen any of Marshall's previous films, you know he always goes all out with practical effects. Some of those films include The Descent, Dog Soldiers, and Doomsday. It's exciting to learn that he'll be implementing this kind of stuff into his Hellboy movie.

As far as the R-rating goes, he explains that he's not going to force the film to be rated R. He just wanted the freedom to tell the story he set out to make, and make sure he was able to bring the intensity of the comic and story to the big screen. 

"We’ve been granted permission to do it R-rated, which for me is just like taking the cuffs off. It’s like, okay, so now we can just make the movie we want to make. It’s not like I’m going to force it to be R-rated, but if it happens to come out that way, just because of my own sensibilities, then fine. And nobody’s going to stop us. So, that’s the main [difference]. And I’m sure, obviously, the success of things like ‘Deadpool’ and ‘Logan’ have not hurt that cause. But, also, when you go back the original material, it is kind of bloody, so I’m going to embrace that."

I like that he is going to embrace the comic and that he's going to bring that hardcore grittiness of it to his film. As much as I loved and enjoyed Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy movies, I'm so interested to see what Marshall and actor David Harbour end up doing with this new film. The script is being written by Andrew Cosby (Eureka), Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola. It just seems like this whole film project is in good hands. 

What do you think about what Marshall had to say here about his plans for the film?