io9: Hellboy 2

New Official Details About Hellboy 2, Transformers 2, Heroes And Sarah Connor Chronicles

Charlie Jane Anders — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 06:00:00 PDT

Apparently there's something called "spoiler stress" that comes from reading too many spoilers, and it can shorten your life! So handle our new motherlode of spoilers for Hellboy 2 and Journey To The Center Of The Earth 3-D with caution. And don't let all of the crazy spoilers/rumors about Saturday's finale of British time-travel show Doctor Who freak you out too much. We also have some new bits of information about the sequels to Iron Man and Transformers, straight from directors Jon Favreau and Michael Bay. And the producers of Heroes and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles also gave some hints about what to expect, plus there are some new Smallville spoilers. So come on, trade your old age for some spoilers. Who wants to live a long time anyway?

Iron Man 2:

Thor won't be making a cameo in Iron Man 2, says director Jon Favreau. He also mentions he's seen early art from from the Captain America movie, and it looks great. [IESB]

Hellboy 2:

Variety also posted its review of Hellboy 2, and it includes some spoilers. As the movie starts, Hellboy's girlfriend Liz is pregnant, but he doesn't realize this at first. There's an early sequence where he battles a giant green forest deity, cradling a baby in his arms. We see a flashback to 1955, where Professor Broom (John Hurt) reads Hellboy more of that story about the making of the mechanical Golden Army to protect the Elves against the humans. The crown controlling the army gets split up, with one part going to the humans and two parts to the ancients.

Fifty years later, Hellboy is working for the Department of Paranormal Research and Defense. His boss wants Hellboy to be discreet and low-profile, so of course he gets thrown out of a burning building and onto a police car. It turns out the Elf Prince Nuada wants to reactivate the Golden Army, but his sister Princess Nuala hides her piece of the all-important crown. The army finally does get awakened, in Ireland, and Hellboy fights Nuada on top of a giant clockwork mechanism. [Variety]

Journey To The Center Of The Earth 3-D:

Variety also posted its early review of Journey To The Center Of The Earth 3-D, with more spoilers. Brendan Fraser plays Trevor, whose brother Max disappeared years ago. Max's bratty teenage son Sean shows up for a visit, bringing a box of Max's papers including a copy of Jules Verne's Journey To The Center Of The Earth. It turns out Max had a theory about volcanic "tubes" that could carry you past the Earth's magma layer into the planet's core. He takes Sean off to Iceland to discover the truth. They hook up with a mountain guide, Anita, who believes Verne was actually writing the truth. They ride a broken down mining rail, over a steep cliff, plummeting miles below sea level into a giant jewel-encrusted cave. They cope with carnivorous plants, Alien-like fish, and dinosaurs. [Variety]

Transformers 2:

Jon Voight (the Secretary of State in the first Transformers) says he won't be back for the sequel. [Collider]

Also, I totally missed the snippet towards the end of this article, where Michael Bay mentions a bit about the plot of Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen. Sam Witwicky goes off to college at an Ivy League-esque East Coast school, but Mikaela (Megan Fox) can't afford college. She travels from L.A. to visit him at his school. [NJ.com via TrekMovie]

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles:

Garret Dillahunt's Terminator, Cromartie, will be a regular in the second season of the Terminator movie spin-off show Sarah Connor Chronicles. Cameron (Summer Glau) has some issues after surviving that explosion at the end of season one, and everybody changes at the end of the first episode. We'll also see Cameron trying to eliminate other girls in John Connor's life, if she feels they pose a strategic threat. [E! Online]

Smallville:

Young-Superman show Smallville is casting three characters for the first episode of season eight: a guard, a scientist and a researcher, all of whose storylines relate to Chloe somehow. Also, Clark has a surprise for Lois when he returns to Metropolis. [Kryptonsite]

Doctor Who:

So what exactly happened at the end of Saturday's episode of time-travel soap Doctor Who, when the dying Doctor started to regenerate? Nobody knows, but there are a few theories:

1) The Doctor has a failed regeneration, with his severed hand involved somehow, and as a result he turns into two different Doctors, both played by David Tennant. (We showed some pics of Tennant wearing two different colored suits on the beach where he said goodbye to Rose in season two.)
2) The Doctor has a failed regeneration, which splits him into two Doctors, one played by David Tennant (thanks to the severed hand?) and the other played by David Morrissey (who's in the Christmas special later this year playing a character referred to as "the other Doctor" on the actors' trailers.)
3) The Doctor has a failed regeneration, which splits him into two Doctors — one of whom is actually Donna. (Not sure where this one comes from, actually.)
4) The Doctor "rolls back" his regenerations for a bit, and turns into Sylvester McCoy, the Doctor from the late 1980s. (The main evidence for this is that Syl was interviewed for Doctor Who Confidential, and was wearing a version of his old costume on camera.)
5) The Doctor's regenerations are tied to the Master's now, so he somehow turns into John Simm. (This has apparently been debunked. Simm won't be back this week, but the Master will show up sometime in 2009.)
6) Something different will happen.
All we do know for sure is that Tennant was filming the Christmas special a while back, so he's definitely not being gotten rid of — unless that was the most elaborate foiler ever. [Doctor Who Forum]

But if you really can't wait, here's someone's fanfic of what might happen on Saturday. [Yo-Mawari]

We do know that Sarah-Jane Smith won't die, because Elisabeth Sladen says she's in the middle of filming a second season of Sarah-Jane Adventures already. [Spoiler TV]

And here's a trailer for Saturday's episode, which reveals almost nothing, except that Davros wants to reduce the universe to atoms, which will become nothing. "The destruction of reality itself!" (What if Davros actually succeeds, and then reality reforms itself, because of nature abhorring a vacuum?) [Planet Gallifrey]

Heroes:

"Villains" is volume three, not season three, of superhero melodrama Heroes — the show's third season will consist of both volumes three and four. (Volume three is just 13 episodes.) The season doesn't introduce many new characters, but some new villains will show up. There's definitely more to Nathan's assassination than meets the eye. Also, we'll explore what will happen if "Sylar were only the tip of the iceberg" in terms of morally corrupt people with superpowers. [Collider again]

Hellboy 2's Psychic Entity Voiced By Family Guy

Meredith Woerner — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 12:00:00 PDT

Seth MacFarlane, creator and voice of The Family Guy, was the only possible actor to provide the voice of Johann Kraus, the disembodied psychic entity who lives in a containment suit, director Guillermo del Toro told New York Comic-Con. "It was very difficult to find Johann a voice, to duplicate the wheezing and mechanical sound." Del Toro showed an extended trailer for the movie, while writer/artist Mike Mignola revealed more about the Lovecraftian Hellboy universe. Spoilers, panel highlights, and contact info for Hellboy 3 internships after the jump.

Cancel The Ten-Foot, Three-Headed Dog

Much to the dismay of director Del Toro, a few creatures had to be dropped from Hellboy 2 including the ten-foot, three-headed bull dog. "I liked it because he was going to be in the back ground licking himself," said Del Toro. He added that the troll market scene in the new Hellboy 2 will be jam-packed with creatures. So never fear, your scary monster quota will be met. But still Del Toro promised he would post an image of the dog online in the next few weeks.

Milk, Eggs, Apocalypse

Del Toro did chat a little about his next project: he's started to sketch and write more about childhood. The possible title his next film is, Saturn At The End Of Days. The concept, "A kid named Saturn is watching the apocalypse happen on the way home from the grocery store," Del Toro revealed. "That one I am just doing because I'll be doing a small movie that I control, that no one else would do for sure."

Man Of The People

Besides being an incredible director, writer and artist Del Toro also knows when its time to look past himself. He encouraged creature designers to reach out to him, saying, "One or two guys have come out of Comic-Con and come to work with me on a movie." Asked by the audience if he ever hires interns, Del Toro encouraged people to email abe_sapien@hotmail.com.

Meanwhile, at his own panel, Hellboy creator Mike Mignola revealed more about his creative process and his early influences, plus the mythology he wants to include in upcoming issues of the comic. Here are his thoughts on a variety of topics.

His Early Influences

"I read Dracula when I was about 13 years old, and that was it. It's got that dark supernatural Victorian stuff, but there's also a background of folklore and old history and legend. My favorite comic growing up was Marvel Comics' Thor. From those two things I got really interested in weird stuff — it's so much fun because so little of it makes any sense."

When Universes Collide

Mignola says he tries not to have the different versions of Hellboy — the movie, animation, comic and video game universes — collide too often. "The movie is very much its own world, and the computer game falls into that world — you know, the one where he's wearing pants. The animations are their own thing." But one unexpected crossover did happen recently: the Hellboy novels have referenced the comics, but not vice versa — until the comics started to use a character that novelist Chris Golden had created. Meanwhile, the short story collections are also their own animal, and don't fit into the comics' universe. "Mostly, I keep my head down and just look at the comics."

Hellboy, Social Critic?

There's not really much social criticism in the Hellboy comics, Mignola says. "It's certainly never been my intention. I just want to see the big stuff smashing into each other. And a talking hedgehog! We have a talking hedgehog coming up! I'm really excited about that."

How To Break Into Comics

Drawing comics was all Mignola ever wanted to do. "I always wanted to draw, and I never really thought I could draw comics, but I wanted to work as an illustrator just drawing monsters and folklore — the kind of stuff I was reading. There just aren't that many places to do that. At some point, I just thought, let me sneak into the comics business. My plan was go to New York and sneak in as an inker, and eventually someone would feel sorry for me and say, "hey, why don't you try drawing a Conan story or something?" That was my goal. But since I was a terrible inker and had no other skills of any kind, one of the editors at Marvel got to me when my inking career died out and said, "are you ready to try drawing now?" I had nothing else to do. I had no fallback. I don't know what else I'd be doing. I was terrible — so bad — but little by little, after 6 or 8 years, I began to figure out what I was doing."

Developing His Art Style

"As I mentioned, I was horrible ... so most of that style came about by trying to be less horrible every time. "Maybe if I try this" is sort of how I thought, and little by little, it worked. Plus the coloring was often not so good, so i thought: "Gee, maybe if I put MORE black, that's one less place they can put pink or yellow." Little by little weird shapes would just be replaced with black. I desperately wanted to be Frank Frazetta in high school and Bernie Wrightson in college, so that's who I looked up to."

Monster-Obsessed

Someone asked, "As a writer, do you ever just want to stop the epic for a little while and write a story about two people just sitting on a beach talking about their feelings, or something?" Mignola replied: "If they're [talking] about monsters, yeah! [Guillermo] del Toro and I are similar in that way — he says if there isn't a weird creature on the call sheet, he doesn't want to go to work that day. Probably one of my failings as a writer is that it just doesn't hold my interest to write about regular people. I do a lot of character stuff, but I do it with these weird creatures."

What Mignola's Currently Reading

"There's not a horror series that I currently read ... I'm not big on contemporary writers. That's not true, there's a guy named David Wellington who just did a book called 99 Coffins, and before that he did a book called 13 Bullets — they're vampire books, and they're exactly the kind of thing I wouldn't normally read, but I read them and they're fantastic. I read mostly weird old stuff, and I'm a short story guy, so I read a lot of weird old short stories. Old 1800s kind of stuff. I'm not big on the whole contemporary world thing, which is why I dropped Hellboy off the face of the Earth. It's more fun to write about different places."

Mignola's Transition From Drawing To Writing

"I never set out to be a writer — I actually just wrote a thing about this in the second volume of the Hellboy Library Edition, whenever it comes out. For a couple months in high school I tried to be a fantasy writer, and then somebody read something I wrote out loud, and I never wanted to do it again until John Byrne said "okay, you're ready. You should write Hellboy yourself." Writing is really fun — but it's really hard. Drawing to me is pure fun, so I always approach it as an artist first and foremost. Working with great artists is so liberating, though, because as a writer, I can just say: "32 guys on horseback approach something" without going "oh my God, what does that look like?" I love writing and drawing my own stuff, and I will continue to do that, but there's something about just concentrating on one thing that's very appealing. For my next novel, I will plot it or co-plot it, but that's one where I'm going to work with another writer, because it would be so much fun to just focus on the art. That's something I haven't done in years."

What's Mignola's Favorite Lovecraft Story?

Says Mignola, "I probably haven't read all the Lovecraft stuff, and what I did read, I read a billion years ago — if I give a favorite now, I'll probably change my mind tomorrow. I love the overall sense of Lovecraft's stories, of this big unknowable universe, of these gigantic things bouncing around that couldn't care less about mankind, and mankind scraping around saying, "hey, what happens if I do this? *bang*" It's almost science fiction, but it stops short of being sci-fi because these gigantic godlike things are so remote from humanity that it's beyond comprehension. It's one of the things I'm always trying to make sure I do in my own work — to me, there's some kind of logic to the supernatural, but no one else can put the pieces together. As soon as there are rules, though, as soon as 2+2=4, it's not science fiction anymore. The further you look back in folklore and mythology, the less you see those hard-and-fast rules. I get upset when people say "vampires can do this or that," because they're supernatural creatures — they can do whatever I need them to do."

Working With Guillermo Del Toro

"Before I met Guillermo, he hadn't done The Devil's Backbone — he had done Cronos and Mimic, which I saw before he ever got onto Hellboy. So when somebody said "he wants to do Hellboy," I was all for it. When we met it was mostly comparing notes, and it worked immediately. He was sitting down, I walked into the room, and he shook my hand and said "I know who should play Hellboy" and I said "I do too" and we both said it at the same time. Then it was easy; we just went to the bookstore and hung out. We played a great trick on Mike Richardson. The second he dropped us off — in Portland, Oregon, where they have the best used bookstores in America — Guillermo said "this is a great opportunity" and we went back to my apartment. Guillermo coached me through the acting for this trick; I called Richardson and started screaming at him "DID YOU TALK TO THIS GUY?! HOW COULD YOU PUT ME WITH HIM?" Richardson was saying, "where is he now?" and I replied, "HE'S GONE! He went to the airport!" It was pretty good. Mostly, Guillermo's just a riot. He's so much fun to work with."

Movies That Influenced The Young Mignola

"There are certainly certain movies that really made a huge effect on me. They're all over the place — Beneath the Planet of the Apes just lit my head on fire, it was a life-changing moment for me. The John Huston Moby Dick, for whatever reason, is the greatest movie ever! I like that big drama stuff. The Bride of Frankenstein, and Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast .... There are some other ones, but that gives you a pretty wide range. I do watch a lot of movies."

When Will We See Duncan Fegredo (Who Illustrated Darkness Falls) Again?

"That's not a bad idea. I should promote my upcoming works! What he's done on the sequel to Darkness Calls — which is called The Wild Hunt — is already better than the entire Darkness Calls miniseries. He's already done most of the first issue. Richard Corben and I are doing a 3-issue miniseries called The Crooked Man, which takes place in the Appalachian mountains in the 1950s. It's got Hellboy dealing with backwoods witchcraft, that kind of thing."

How Lobster Johnson Got His Name

"I was in Italy, and I woke up and said to my wife, 'I just came up with the greatest name for a character ever!' And she looked at me the way she looks at me, which is: 'yeah, that's great, honey.' Every once in awhile something just comes together. I can labor and labor to try to think of names, but the best one just came to me. Every time I met a new character, I would go, 'can I use Lobster Johnson for that?'"

On Being A Perfectionist

"It's certainly easier to work on stuff when people aren't anticipating it, and the longer you wait between series, the more people are anticipating it: 'It's been 5 years! It must really be good!' I've always been a perfectionist, which is part of why now I want to do these smaller stories. There isn't that gigantic burden. The Amazing Screw-On Headwent really smooth, because I knew nobody was going to care about it — it went so well for me and was so much fun. I want to do more stuff like that, where I'm like, 'Well, no danger of anybody caring about this!'"

Additional reporting by Kaila Hale-Stern.

More Monstery Goodness in New Hellboy II Trailer

Annalee Newitz — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 13:11:23 PDT

Yahoo's got the full theatrical trailer for Hellboy II: The Golden Army, and once again it's clear that director Guillermo Del Toro won't be skimping on the monsters. Here we get to see more of the Golden Army itself, and the plot arc becomes clearer. Creatures from one of those other hellish dimensions have come to our world to reclaim it as their own. And of course Hellboy is brought in to fight them. Along with Abe Sapien, who is now more intriguing to me than ever because Hellboy creator Mike Mignola has just given Abe his own spinoff comic. [Yahoo]

Which Summer Movie Will Be The Biggest Flop?

Charlie Jane Anders — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:51:34 PDT

This summer movie season will be like a traffic jam of Transformers wannabes, with more sequels and potential franchises coming out than ever before. And it's just barely possible that every single one of these films will be a mega-smash hit. It just doesn't seem very likely somehow. Click through to vote for the biggest box-office disappointment of summer 2008.

Note: I left out some smaller movies and some films that we know will probably bomb, like Eddie Murphy's Starship Dave. I also left out M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening, which seems likely to bomb, even though I don't want to diss the Wahlberg. I wanted to avoid including any movie that was such an obvious choice, it would get a landslide vote. Plus, I'm not sure either Starship Dave or The Happening is really intended to be a summer blockbuster, or if they're more like counter-programming hoping to score a niche audience.

Also, this seems to be as good a place as any to ask: Is Get Smart science fiction? Should we be covering it?

Tons Of Spoilers For Hellboy 2, Plus Terminator, X-Files Pics

charliejane — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 06:00:23 PST

In today's Morning Spoilers, we've got tons of new details about the Hellboy sequel, including a crucial scene that could set up a possible Hellboy III. We've also got new set pics from X-Files 2 and a first look at Garrett Dillahunt in Sarah Connor Chronicles. Plus spoilage on Lost and Star Trek. Click through to ruin all the surprises!

Hellboy 2 takes place four years after Hellboy, when Liz has moved in with Hellboy in the BPRD headquarters. A struggle emerges between two elf factions, led by Princess Nuala (Anna Walton) and Prince Nuada (Luke Goss) respectively. Everybody's trying to get hold of the missing piece of the crown of the Troll Kingdom, split into three pieces after an epic battle. Whoever puts all the pieces together can lead the unstoppable Golden Army.

The third piece of the crown is being sold off in an auction house in the surface world, and Prince Nuada's attempt to grab it puts him in conflict with Hellboy and the BPRD. SuperheroHype visited the sets of Hellboy 2 and saw the Troll King's chamber, actually a Hungarian church dressed up with six fake boilers from Antal & Co. Guillermo Del Toro & crew also built a huge Brooklyn street set, where Hellboy battles invading trolls and a giant creature. Hellboy and Liz face the Angel of Death, played by Doug Jones, who brought many of the weird creatures in Pan's Labyrinth to life. The Angel's wings open to show a series of eyes. Liz makes some kind of deal with the Angel of Death to save Hellboy's life. The Angel asks her to choose "the world or him," and she chooses him. The Angel tells her that when the time comes, she'll suffer "more than than anyone," and she says she'll deal with it. This may set up a conflict for Hellboy III, if it happens. [SuperheroHype]

More spoilers:

Here are a couple of pics of Garrett Dillahunt (No Country For Old Men) in his new role as Cromartie (probably the evil Terminator) in Sarah Connor Chronicles. [The4400Guide]
Weirdly, Whoopi Goldberg confirmed that another crashed Oceanic Flight 815 will be recovered from the ocean (with people on it) in an upcoming Lost episode. Is it a fake plane? Or an alternate universe version? Whoopi's not saying. [SpoilersLost]
Here's a complete roundup of Star Trek spoilers and rumors that have already come out, with nothing particularly new. Time-traveling Romulans, Nero (Eric Bana), Nimoy traveling back, birth of Kirk, etc. etc. [UGO]
X-Files 2 will be all about swimsuits. Or maybe not, but apparently there's a key scene where someone, maybe David Duchovny, finds a swimsuit and a bracelet. Also, here are some new pics of the filming in Newfoundland, posted by co-star Xzibit. [XFilesNews]

Watch The Cloverfield Monster Do The Funky Chicken

charliejane — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 06:00:07 PST

Gearfuse has somebody's camera-phone recording of the Cloverfield monster in action, which they posted as an animated gif. It sort of looks like a zany monster dance, partly thanks to the choppiness of the animation. This will be someone's LJ icon with a silly caption half an hour from now. Click through to see it and read spoilers for Star Trek and Battlestar, plus new Lost and X-Files pics. Spoilers follow, so be warned!

I'm not even going to make the obvious joke about a cameraphone recording of a handheld video cam recording. Meanwhile, there's also a new clip that doesn't show the monster.

The giant time-travel donut thingy from the original Star Trek? The one that sends Captain Kirk back in time to smooch Liz Taylor? Turns out it's not appearing in the new Trek movie after all, says screenwriter Roberto Orci. Any time travel in the movie will be "totally original" and yet will reward fans who know all about the canon. Make of that what you will. [TrekWeb]
We'll get to know Abe Sapien a lot better in Hellboy 2, and he'll have more action scenes using a gun as well as Capoeira. And he'll have a love interest. [IF Magazine]
Agent Doggett and Agent Reyes won't appear in X-Files 2, but will be in the third film if it happens. [X-Files community]
And here are three more new pics of Mulder and Scully. [UGO]

In Battlestar season four, Starbuck will learn of the Cylon god's prediction that she's the herald of the apocalypse (from Battlestar Galactica: Razor.) Lee and Baltar will definitely make it to Earth. Lee and Anders take part in the big space battle in the first episode, and some of the Cylon raiders refuse to fire on Anders because they somehow realize he's a Cylon. Tigh is in denial about the whole "Cylon" thing, but Tory is stoked about it. Cally kills herself early on this season. We'll learn who the final Cylon is sometime in this spring's episodes, and it'll be "emotionally resonant" and make sense of a lot of things. [Pop Media Cult]
Jack and the other Lost castaways who make it off the island agree to lie about what happened. They don't see each other much afterwards, and when they do it's incredibly uncomfortable. [WildBluffMedia]
And here are three new promo photos from Lost: [SpoilersLost]

Guillermo Del Toro Piecing Together Frankenstein For TV

Kevin Kelly — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 13:40:55 PST

Guillermo del Toro isn't content enough to sit back on his Pan's Labyrinth earnings and let Hellboy 2: The Golden Army just ride the coattails of the original film into the box office. He's rumbling about a new television version of the mad scientist classic Frankentstein. "The only way to do the Shelley novel is to actually do a four-hour miniseries," said Del Toro, which is probably the smartest comment we've ever heard about adopting this book into a project. We say, you go, Guillermo. We know you could easily trump that Kenneth Branagh / Robert De Niro version. [MTV Movie Blog]

Hellboy II Provides More Viral Photo Fanwank

Kevin Kelly — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 08:15:19 PST

Hellboy II: The Golden Army will apparently be trotting out artwork much in the same way that Batman: The Dark Knight has been. At least you don't have to wait for any cards to flip over, or decipher obscure clues to see this one. But... it tells us nothing, other than the fact that yes, Selma Blair is in this movie. Which we already knew. Thank god we didn't have work out a puzzle in ancient Sanskrit to find that out, otherwise we'd know exactly how Ralphie felt in A Christmas Story when he decoded that Ovaltine mesage.