Guillermo del Toro, who is readying Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, told SCI FI Wire that the sequel to 2004's Hellboy will feature killer robots and a new character, the spectral B.P.R.D. agent Johann Kraus, but will eliminate Rupert Evans' Agent Myers, the only character not drawn from Mike Mignola's Hellboy comics series. As for the plot, del Toro likened it to his upcoming historical fantasy film Pan's Labyrinth.
"The idea is, in a strange way, not very different from Pan's Labyrinth," del Toro said in a telephone interview on Sept. 28. "It's a clash between the real world and the fantasy world, you know? And how the world of humans is destroying, eroding, imagination."
Del Toro said the sequel will bring back most of the main characters, including Ron Perlman's big red demon, Selma Blair's pyrokinetic Liz Sherman and Doug Jones' amphibious Abe Sapien. "Yeah, actually, everybody will be back, except Agent Myers, ... the only non-comic-book-based character of the first one," del Toro said. "And we're bringing in Johann Kraus, the ectoplasmic agent from the comics." In the comics, Kraus is a disembodied spirit with psychic abilities who maintains form by wearing a containment suit and is an active member of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense.
Another well-known character from the comics, Roger the Homunculus, may appear in the film, but only briefly, del Toro added. "We will only see him in the background, in the corridor, like we did the first time," he said. "We played with the idea of bringing him in, but in a strange way, ... Roger ... in the comics is not very removed from Hellboy's plight in the first movie, which is he's essentially a very human soul trapped in a very brutal body. So I think ... Mike Mignola and I both felt, in writing the story, that it was too similar."
As for the robots? The won't be like the killer robotized gorillas in the comics. "There will be killer robots, period," del Toro said with a laugh. "Gorilla-sized, but not gorillas."
