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

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.”