By: Nick Venable

There’s a lot riding on the box office earnings of Guillermo Del Toro’s $200 million “robots vs. monsters” tentpole flick Pacific Rim , both for the filmmakers and for Legendary Pictures, the production company that footed the majority of the inflated budget. Legendary’s eight-year partnership with Warner Bros. is coming to an end soon – even with non-guaranteed hits likeGodzilla and 300: Rise of an Empire coming next year – so the company would be wise to quickly latch itself onto a franchise it can call its own, should any of thesefilms fail to match expectations.

Could that potential franchise Del Toro’s Hellboy series?

Call us cautiously optimistic about this one. ShockTilYouDrop shared some interview tidbits shared by both Del Toro and Hellboy/Pacific Rim star Ron Perlman. Del Toro was understandably less inclined to be overly positive about the prospects.

“I hate giving pieces away about it,” he said, “but last night, we were at dinner and Ron said, ‘I would be happy to do Hellboy again, when are we doing Hellboy 3?’ Thomas [Tull, Legendary’s Founder and CEO] said, ‘I would love to see Hellboy 3.’ He didn’t say he would love to do it; he just said he’d like to see it, but today, I’ll ask him.” This sounds like a turn from Del Toro’s former insistence that a sequel would never happen, due to both a lack of audiences and a possibly dispute with comic artist Mike Mignola over subject matter issues.

But Perlman, who once said he wouldn’t do another Hellboy because of the heavy make-up issues, was far more openly joyous about the prospect. “I loved working for Legendary, and Iknow for Guillermo, working on Pacific Rim was one of his greatest experiences,” Perlman shared. “The reason I loved working for them is because Guillermo was so happy. I came in six months into the shoot and he seemed as fresh as a daisy, simply because he was working for someone who appreciated and supported his outlandish visions of what he wanted to puton the screen. My immediate, silent wish was, wouldn’t it be great if these guys came in and helped resolve the Hellboy series.” We think Perlman should just go ahead and get permanent devil horns surgically implanted anyway.

Legendary’s Tull later responded by saying “there are rights issues that would need to be sorted out for Legendary to get involved.” No word on whether these issues are something Tull thought would be worth his time however.

It’s no secret that the U.S. box office for Hellboy II: The Golden Army didn’t even match its budget, though the international grosses made the film profitable. The clamor for a third film is relegated mostly to the already sizable fanbase, but there’s no way to gauge how interested the general movie audience is at this point.

Source: Cinema Blend