10 Actors Who Knew Their Action Movie Was Doomed From Day One

When Guillermo del Toro brought Mike Mignola’s cult demonic comic book series to the screen with his version of Hellboy (2004), he created an almost perfect visual representation of the character and his world. He followed this up with Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008), which was widely considered to be an even better movie, with both films showcasing the Hellboy story in emphatic fashion, and with lead actor Ron Perlman making the character his own.

It was rumoured that del Toro would be returning to complete a trilogy of Hellboy movies, but sadly this wasn’t to be for the visionary Mexican director. Instead, bringing the demonic hero back was trusted into the hands of Neil Marshall (The Descent). And hot on the heels of his acclaimed role in Netflix's Stranger Things, David Harbour was chosen to fill Perlman’s giant red boots. However, visually and story-wise the film failed to match the standards set from del Toro’s two films and failed dismally at the box office.

During the filming process, it would seem that Harbour could see that the writing was on the wall and even took to Instagram Live to note, “Guillermo del Toro and Ron Perlman created this iconic thing that we thought could be reinvented … I think it failed before we began shooting, because I think that people didn’t want us to make the movie. It was a very difficult experience because I wanted a lot out of it”.