David Harbour got advice from Ryan Reynolds when ‘Hellboy’ flopped

Ryan Reynolds.

Ryan Reynolds.

Published Jul 7, 2022

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David Harbour turned to Ryan Reynolds for advice when 2019’s “Hellboy” was on the brink of flopping.

The “Stranger Things” star, 47, has revealed he went to the 45-year-old actor for reassurance that he was “gonna survive this” as the Canadian star had experienced the same with his 2011 movie “Green Lantern”.

Speaking to the latest issue of “GQ Hype”, he said: “I know (Ryan) a little bit. I called him and I was like, Hey man, I just need to know something. You know ‘Green Lantern’? Huge flop for you.

“What the f*** is that like, because I think I’m going to hit that right now. Am I gonna be okay? Am I gonna survive this?”

Harbour played the titular demonic hero in the 2019 revamp directed by Neil Marshall, but it was savaged by critics and bombed at the box office.

And the “Black Widow” actor previously admitted he can see why the project was a bad idea because audiences simply cherished Guillermo del Toro’s two “Hellboy” movies too much to give the fresh flick a chance.

Speaking on Instagram Live in 2020, he said: “I think it failed before we began shooting because I think that people didn’t want us to make the movie and for some reason that we thought could be reinvented and then they certainly – the loudness of the internet was like, ‘We do not want you to touch this.’

“And then we made a movie that I think is fun and I think had its problems but was a fun movie and then people were just very against it and that’s people’s right, but I learnt my lesson in a lot of different ways.”

Guillermo’s “Hellboy” films starred Ron Perlman as the Dark Horse Comics character and were hugely popular with critics and audiences alike. He had planned to make a third movie but it was scrapped due to a lack of funding.

Harbour previously claimed the reboot was fundamentally flawed because there were too many voices contributing to the project.

Likening the project to chocolate, he explained: “It’s like chocolate, it’s a flavour. So everybody goes, ‘Chocolate is delicious and these guys make the best chocolate.’

“So as you judge the movies, it’s like, ‘Well it’s not as chocolatey as this; this does not taste like chocolate at all.’

“And I want a world where there’s more flavours than just comparisons to chocolate. So in that way, when ‘Hellboy’ is viewed on the chocolate spectrum, it does very poorly.”

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