Let’s face it, the new HELLBOY was only ever intended for a niche audience. As a part of that niche audience, I really enjoyed it, despite the plot being a kaleidoscope of fragmented threads swimming around each other like little jellyfish with their tentacles never quite touching. If you are a member of that niche you probably liked the movie too. But everybody else? Not so much.
Even before AVENGERS: ENDGAME obliterated all other movies at the box office like Thanos snapping his fingers, HELLBOY was struggling financially. As it stands right now, it’s fairly safe to go out on that extremely short limb and label it a flop. A *big* flop. A so-big-it-is-hard-to-imagine-the-franchise-continuing flop. Whose fault is that? The studio? They have to share a lot of the blame. Why release the movie now, between CAPTAIN MARVEL and AVENGERS: ENDGAME? Would it not have played better around Halloween? And there are reports of studio stiffs in suits trying to interfere with the director, and that *never* works out for the best. We already know that lies have been told, that Guillermo Del Toro didn’t want to do a third HELLBOY film, when he most certainly did. While none of the HELLBOY films have been big moneymakers, there is no doubt that this new installment would have done better financially had Del Toro been attached.
Also, might we place some of the blame on Hellboy’s creator, Mike Mignola? Did Mignola insist on a movie that adhered more closely to the comics, even if the end result was a movie that *only* someone who has read the comics could follow?