Hellboy is one of Hollywood's most beloved characters. So why does hardly anyone know a new movie exists?

• Hellboy is one of Hollywood's most recognizable characters.
• "Hellboy: The Crooked Man" is the latest film centered on the demon detective who originated in comic books.

A new "Hellboy" movie is coming to theaters — but most people have no idea.

Even the most casual movie fan might have expected to hear that one of cinema's most iconic characters is returning to the big screen.

Instead, a bizarre, messy marketing campaign left even industry insiders unaware of the film's existence, as fans wondered why the studio appeared to have given up on it before it was out.

Guillermo del Toro's 2005 and 2008 "Hellboy" movies, which brought comic artist Mike Mignola's beloved demon detective to life, are cult classics. To this day, fans beg del Toro and lead actor Ron Perlman to make a third installment. But a sequel never came to fruition, and Perlman told Business Insider earlier this year that he had made peace with not playing Hellboy again.

Instead, fans got 2019's widely panned "Hellboy" reboot, led by "Stranger Things" actor David Harbour. That left fans hungry for production company Millennium Media to redeem itself and do justice to one of the most recognizable comic heroes outside Marvel and DC.

When Millennium Media announced in February 2023 that it was working on its second Hellboy movie, "The Crooked Man," fans were keen to see what director Brian Taylor — who has a reputation for making action movies with visual flair — could bring to the franchise.

"Hellboy: The Crooked Man" takes the hero back to the roots of Mignola's horror-tinged comics. In it, Hellboy (Jack Kesy) tackles a terrifying spirit called the Crooked Man (Martin Bassindale), who terrorized a small town in the Appalachian mountains in 1959.

But when filming in Bulgaria wrapped in May 2023, instead of Millennium Media teasing audiences with images from the set, trailer countdowns, and actors doing press tours, there was radio silence for a year.

No one even knew what Kesy's Hellboy looked like until a teaser dropped out of the blue on YouTube in early July this year, and he certainly wasn't on "Hot Ones" as you might expect. Fans were disappointed with the teaser's shoddy CGI and cheesy dialogue.

When a higher-quality trailer dropped in late July that included more horror visuals, fans were pleasantly surprised.

But surprise became confusion when a poster in Vietnamese was shared on social media in August. It featured release dates in various countries, ranging from August 29 in Portugal to November 22 in Spain. Typically, releases across countries are spaced out by days or weeks, not months.

As of September 18, the film still didn't have a US release date, when that would usually be the priority for an English language movie made by an American studio.

All this made it seem there was no concrete plan for executing the film's marketing.

Perhaps most surprisingly, "Hellboy: The Crooked Man" is not as disastrous as the marketing might suggest. It's not perfect, but a tight horror film that happens to have Hellboy is refreshing in an era of cinematic universes and spinoffs.

Fans wonder if Millennium Media made 'Hellboy: The Crooked Man' to keep the rights to the character

Ethan Baird, a video game animator who runs HellboyNews, one of the character's biggest fan accounts on X, told BI the studio's half-hearted approach to marketing was a "missed opportunity because they have an IP on their hands which goes against superhero fatigue.

"It's a low-budget horror film, which we don't really see in the genre anymore. It's so disappointing because the 2019 movie was horrible, but they put so much effort into marketing it."

He added: "This time, it's the complete opposite: No one knows that this film is coming out."

The question is, why?

It's unclear, and the information vacuum has been filled with speculation and rumor. Some believe Millennium Media made "The Crooked Man" on a small budget with the sole intention of keeping the rights to Hellboy.

"I think they probably made it to keep the rights because the film was made in just over a year, on a low budget, and that's an insane amount of time to get a motion picture going," Baird said. "I feel bad saying that because it's evident it's a passion project for Brian Taylor, and to put that label on it feels dirty. But from a studio perspective, it makes a lot of sense."

Even Rob Mitchell, the director of theatrical insights at Gower Street Analytics, told BI he didn't know the film existed until the trailer dropped.

Studios sometimes make movies to avoid losing rights to characters or franchises, he said, but it's unclear if this is the case for "The Crooked Man" as the "rights seem to keep changing hands between studios." The previous films were produced by Revolution Studios, Universal Pictures, and Millennium Media.

Alternatively, Millenium Media and its US distributor, Ketchup Entertainment, may be hoping to profit by selling the film to a streaming service, making marketing for a theatrical release potentially less important.

"The producers may potentially already be in profit or close to profit from the sales of the film to distributors. As I understand it, it's a $20 million film. That is an amount that ought to be relatively getable through rights sales through distribution and streaming down the line," he said, without providing a source for the budget.

Millennium Media didn't respond to BI's request to confirm the film's budget.

Mitchell added that "theatrical releases serve as sort of a shop window," to draw customers in, which is why "with platforms, like iTunes, you get better placing on the platform if you've had a theatrical release."

The director of 'Hellboy: The Crooked Man' said he knew the movie would face 'challenges'

When asked to comment on the delay between filming wrapping up and the trailer dropping, Taylor told BI: "It took longer than it should have, but I've just got to be really generic and say, every movie has its challenges. And I was aware going into it that there would be certain challenges, and I was not disappointed." Taylor didn't elaborate on why he expected to face difficulties.

The director also noted that movies, in general, are hard to produce.

"They're just all hard. A lot of times things take longer than they should. We didn't have as much time as we should before we started and then ended up having way too much time after we finished. I wish we could have reversed those two" he said.

Taylor added that his team was well-prepared for shooting, so it was a tight production: "We knew exactly what we were doing. We had a really tight shooting schedule and were really aggressive. We were doing 30, 40 setups a day, and we really kicked ass getting this movie done. And in post-production, we knew exactly what we wanted. We had this thing assembled very, very quickly."

Millennium Media declined to comment when shown Taylor's response.

Taylor added: "From a filmmaking point of view, post was really easy. From a business point of view, post was challenging. It was just tough. But thankfully, it's over and we finally got it out there."