When you’re casting an actor to play opposite Hellboy, you probably want one with some background in the demon-hunting business. Neil Marshall (The Descent) knows this, which is why he went out and nabbed Milla Jovovich — the veteran of six Resident Evil films — to play the nefarious Blood Queen in his upcoming reboot.
Jovovich is known best for her role as Alice, the main protagonist of the Resident Evil movies, but in Hellboy (formerly titled Hellboy: Rise of the Blood Queen; the subtitle was dropped earlier this month), she’ll need to switch sides to embody a more sinister character, according to Deadline.
The Blood Queen, also known as Nimue or the Lady of the Lake, was a mythical sorceress from the Middle Ages who used her guile to entrap the sorcerer Merlin in an eternal grave. Eventually, her power-mad ways led other witches to kill her, dice her up into little bits, and hide the pieces in a box buried deep underground. According to the Hellboy wiki, the Blood Queen returned to lead a coven of witches in Britain after Gruagach — one of Hellboy’s many adversaries — poured a village’s worth of blood into the box.
Eventually, Nimue even transforms into a giant, dragon-like monster to do battle against Hellboy. Obviously, we have no idea if any of this will happen in Marshall’s adaptation, but we like Arthurian legends and giant dragons, so we’re holding out hope.
Marshall probably isn’t done recruiting talent, but he does have the building blocks for an promising movie, with David Harbour (Stranger Things‘ Chief Hopper) and Ian McShane (American Gods) set to play Hellboy and Professor Broom, respectively.
The film will be rated-R, which — combined with Marshall’s horror chops — could mean we’re getting a proper Hellboy movie this time around. Despite the involvement of acclaimed director Guillermo del Toro and Ron Perlman as the titular demon, many fans were disappointed with earlier, toned-down PG13 adaptations. Marshall has no such reservations, as his earlier films, including Centurion and Dog Soldiers, should suggest.
Hellboy will begin filming in September in locations across Europe. No release date has yet been set for the movie.
