Hellboy stars David Harbour in the titular role.Neil Marshall’s Hellboy reboot braved highly negative reviews to earn a solid 1.4 million dollar sum on Thursday previews, Variety reported. Starring Stranger Things actor David Harbour in the titular role, Hellboy is the third Hellboy live-action film in the franchise after Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy (2004) and its followup Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008).
The franchise is based on the Dark Horse comics character of the same name.
Hellboy has been denounced by critics. It holds a 15 per cent rating at Rotten Tomatoes, meaning only 15 per cent of its reviews are positive. The critical consensus reads, “Bereft of the imaginative flair that made earlier Hellboys so enjoyable, this soulless reboot suggests Dante may have left a tenth circle out of his Inferno.”
Its audience score (67 per cent) is a little more encouraging. Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane, Sasha Lane, Daniel Dae Kim, and Thomas Haden Church also star in an Andrew Cosby scripted film.
The official synopsis reads, “Hellboy is back, and he’s on fire. From the pages of Mike Mignola’s seminal work, this action packed story sees the legendary half-demon superhero (David Harbour, “Stranger Things”) called to the English countryside to battle a trio of rampaging giants. There he discovers The Blood Queen, Nimue (Milla Jovovich, Resident Evil series), a resurrected ancient sorceress thirsting to avenge a past betrayal. Suddenly caught in a clash between the supernatural and the human, Hellboy is now hell-bent on stopping Nimue without triggering the end of the world.”
Shazam!, DC Comics movie, is expected to lead its second weekend after debuting with 53 million dollars last weekend. It only has a 90 to 100 million dollar budget to recover.
Unlike Hellboy, the Zachary Levi starrer also has solid reviews to back it up with a rating of 90 per cent at Rotten Tomatoes, with the consensus being, “An effortlessly entertaining blend of humor and heart, Shazam! is a superhero movie that never forgets the genre’s real power: joyous wish fulfillment.”
