Exclusive: Guillermo del Toro on 'Hellboy II'
Director Guillermo del Toro talks to Premiere about 'Hellboy II,' murderous tooth fairies, and signing away the next five years of his life to Bilbo Baggins.
By Stuart Levine
Guillermo del Toro on the set of Hellboy II
Courtesy of Universal
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What's the Spanish word for mensch?
A Yiddish word derived from German, a mensch is someone who is admirable, honorable and has firmness of purpose. The question arises because Jeffrey Tambor, who stars in both Hellboy and Hellboy II: The Golden Army as bureaucrat Tom Manning, says that's the most accurate way to describe director Guillermo del Toro.
"He's a very strong man," Tambor explains, "and has a strong sense of what he wants."
If what del Toro wants is to make an impression as a filmmaker on the rise, consider it mission accomplished. Although he directed and wrote his first film, Doña Lupe, more than 20 years ago and won a top award at Cannes with Cronos in 1993, his last few movies are the ones that have increased his global profile.
While The Devil's Backbone made an art house splash in 2001, it was Hellboy that really put him on the map — and not just with the comic book crowd. The 2004 film cost around $66 million to make and grossed $59 million in the U.S. Those are hardly Spider-Man-type numbers, but a healthy international take and good DVD revenue gave Universal enough reason to see franchise potential. The company greenlit Hellboy II and gave del Toro more money to play with too, to the tune of about $85 million, according to the director. With the film opening July 11 — prime summer blockbuster time — expectations are high.
While some directors aren't particularly fond of sequels, don't count Guillermo del Toro among them.
"In retrospect, I found many things we could've done different on the first Hellboy, so I'm happy to revisit that world. If you see the movies together, they're very different, and might as well be two different stories," he says. "I wanted to spend more time with characters and to make the action sequences more personable. The first one, I thought some of the action was by the numbers. The creatures were nice, but I thought we didn't push that enough. The things that I take with me from the first one are the character moments. I wanted to do more of that.
"For the first one, I wanted to be as faithful to the comic as much as I could be but, in retrospect, with this one, if it's going to be my imprint, I want to have some fun with it."
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