A third chapter in the cinematic adventures of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy has been speculated on and desired for years. Hellboy himself, actor Ron Perlman, recently took to Twitter to try and “rally the troops”, so to speak, and get the fan community to get the hashtag #HellboyIII trending– mainly to prove to any potential backers or studios out there that the big red ape absolutely has a loyal fanbase who’ll turn up opening weekend for a third Hellboy movie. Below is Perlman’s initial post from June 3rd:

This tweet was quickly supported by fellow Hellboy cast members like Selma Blair and Doug Jones. So did Ron Perlman’s plan work already? Not too many weeks after he made that initial post, he followed up with this one, via Instagram:

This seems to indicate that something’s up, and a third Hellboy is on the way. Or is it? When asked during a Reddit AMA last year if he’d ever consider a third Hellboy movie, director Guillermo del Toro said  “Creatively, I would love to make it. Creatively. But it is proven almost impossible to finance. [W]e have gone through basically every studio and asked for financing, and they are not interested.”

The reason for the non-interest from the studios probably has a lot to do with the underperformance of the second Hellboy movie,  Hellboy II: The Golden Army, which cost $85 million to produce and only made $75 million– although, it opened one week after The Dark Knight in 2008, and we all know what a monster that movie turned out to be when it was released, pretty much demolishing everything that came after it that summer.

But still, there is a fanbase, and if a Hellboy movie could be made on a smaller budget, it’s not inconceivable that someone out there has decided to take the risk and complete the trilogy. I mean, if Vin Diesel could get Riddick made after the expensive flop that was the second Chronicles of Riddick movie, then surely anything is possible.

HT: Ron Perlman, Slashfilm