David Harbour Drops an F-bomb Recalling Hellboy Box Office Disaster
Looks like David Harbour has learned a valuable lesson from his experience with the Hellboy reboot being one of the biggest box office bombs of recent years.
David Harbour earned global fame for playing Jim Hopper in Stranger Things and then Red Guardian in last year's Black Widow, the role that introduced the actor to the MCU. However, not all of his recent roles were that successful.
Neil Marshall's 2019 Hellboy, where Harbour played the lead role, got overall negative reviews and bombed at the box office grossing $55.1 million globally against a $50 million production budget.
Three years later, the actor chooses to treat this box office disaster as a learning experience.
When asked what he learned from working on the reboot, Harbour told Yahoo Entertainment that his main lesson was to never get involved with popular IPs. The actor used much stronger language, though.
"I learned not to f*** with an established IP, that's for sure," Harbour said.
The actor added that going into a "beloved and established IP" is a tough nut to crack and he thought that the Hellboy reboot was doomed from the very beginning because of its fan-favorite predecessor, Guillermo del Toro's 2004 Hellboy and its huge fanbase. This is not the first time Harbour expressed that opinion. Earlier, the actor revealed on his Instagram that he felt fans of Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy didn't want them to touch the iconic franchise and make a reboot.
The actor admitted the 2019's movie had "major problems" after it came out and earned a wave of negative reviews. But the main reason for the box-office disaster, except all the behind-the-scenes drama, was that fans got a reboot instead of a sequel, Harbour thought. It's certainly hard to reinvent a beloved character without fans getting mad.
The movie's failure even made Harbour give a call to Ryan Reynolds who had a similar experience with 2011's Green Lantern. According to Harbour, Reynolds was very "sweet" and reassuring, but the Hellboy box-office disaster was still an extremely disappointing experience for the actor.
That's why now he prefers to be part of original projects like Stranger Things and the upcoming movie Violent Night, where the actor plays a badass Santa Clause.
"It's an original thing so people can judge it when it comes out," the actor explained.