10 Flop Movies That Somehow Got Sequels
3. Hellboy
Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy wrung an enormous amount of production value out of its sensible $66 million budget, yet despite its eye-popping visual design and Ron Perlman's charming central performance, it netted just $99.8 million globally - a frustrating hair short of $100 million.
This made Hellboy an undeniable flop, and seemingly ensured that del Toro's planned superhero franchise would hit an immediate stop.
And yet, due to Hellboy performing extremely well on home video, Universal decided to pick up the rights to a sequel after Sony decided to walk away, presumably believing that said home video success would propel Hellboy 2 to box office dynamite.
While Hellboy II: The Golden Army certainly performed stronger than its predecessor, $168.3 million against an $85 million budget just wasn't good enough, causing Universal to hastily bin-off any prospect of a third film, despite del Toro and Perlman's concerted efforts to make it happen.
A David Harbour-led reboot was then finally released in 2019, though only barely recouped its $50 million budget, leading to another impending reboot, Hellboy: The Crooked Man, which wrapped shooting in 2023.