My full recap of the marketing for Hellboy is up at The Hollywood Reporter.
Online and Social
In addition to the usual material the official website offers a “Characters” section that disappointingly just has some background video and the name of the actor playing that character without any additional information. The “Posters” section lets you share those images to social media as well. There are also links to the official Twitter, Instagram and Facebook profiles.
Media and Publicity
While casting news usually isn’t that notable, this is the exception. Controversy erupted when actor Ed Skrein, who’s white, was cast as Major Ben Daimio, an Asian-American character. Once more Hollywood was accused (not without reason) of whitewashing Asian and other non-caucasian characters. It wasn’t long, though, before Skrein announced he was voluntarily leaving the film, citing his ignorance of the character’s ethnic identity and desire to not be part of the problem. Shortly after that Daniel Dae Kim took on the role, which is much more appropriate.
That was followed by the first bit of actual promotion of the movie, a photo showing off Harbour in full makeup as the demon. That invited plenty of comparisons to Perlman’s version but was overall generally well-received.
EW offered another good look at Harbour as Hellboy along with comments from him and others about the movie and character.
Kim was interviewed about how he sees it was fate that lead him to take a role in this movie given some of his other recent career changes and later about diversity in films and more. Harbour appeared on “Kimmel” to talk about the movie as well as some of the morning talk shows.
Another featurette focused on how the filmmakers used practical special effects as much as possible.
Just before opening, a story came out recounting some of the troubles that reportedly made production less than idyllic, including disagreements between the producers and director, the director and star and more. While this may be a bit of overdramatizing of small flare-ups, it certainly doesn’t bode well given everything else that’s weighing the film down.
Picking Up the Spare
Another feature on the effects, specifically Baba Yaga.
Cinematic Slant 