In the spirit of Hellboy II’s release, Director Guillermo Del Toro will participate in an exclusive, first-ever world premiere live chat powered by BD-Live™ on Sunday, November 23rd @6pm PST (9pm EST).
To participate, all users need to do is log into www.UniversalHiDef.com and then enter the “Director’s Chat” under my account to enter up to 3 questions for the Director to answer. Then connect your Blu-ray™ player to the Internet and chat with Guillermo Del Toro on November 23rd!
Here’s the official ad for the chat: http://www.hellboymovie.com/
Check out some new behind-the-scenes clips we received to gear up for the release of Hellboy II: The Golden Army (on DVD and Blu-ray 11/11).
The first one is really cool, Guillermo del Toro takes viewers behind-the-scenes giving a tour of the Troll Market.
Troll Market Tour with Guillermo del Toro:
Also, here’s a quick look at some of the extras that can be found on the bonus features.
Hellboy 2 DVD — In Service of the Demon:
Hellboy II: The Golden Army, directed by Guillermo del Toro, will arrive on 3-Disc DVD & Blu-ray Hi-Def on November 11th from Universal Studios Home Entertainment.
To gear up for the release, we just received a couple of clips off the bonus features for the DVD that I thought you and your readers might enjoy. The first one is pretty cool and gives a behind-the-scenes look at Guillermo del Toro and Seth McFarlane discussing the voicing and animation of the character of Johann (Seth McFarlane was the voice of Johann in the film).
Seth McFarlane discusses Hellboy II:
The second one gives an inside look at all of the imaginative creatures in the film.
The creatures of Hellboy II:
Hellboy II: The Golden Army will arrive on 3-disc DVD & Blu-ray Hi-Def November 11th loaded with over 3 hours of bonus features. There also will be a special 3-Disc Collector’s Set available including the 3-Disc DVD, poster, excerpts from the journal of Director Guillermo del Toro and limited edition golden army statue.
Here’s a cool article on Guillermo Del Toro and his new movie Hellboy II, where he talks about his love of monsters and what they represent in todays world. From USA Today:
LOS ANGELES — When Guillermo del Toro stares at the monsters under his bed, they stare back into him.
“I’m interested in monsters because, much like archangels and angels, they represent a portion of the human soul,” says the Mexican writer/director of Pan’s Labyrinth and HellboyII:The Golden Army, which arrives Friday.
Del Toro has become a sought-after director for his distinctive creatures and otherworldly parables that use the realms of fantasy to explore fundamental human issues such as love, alienation, weakness and, of course, fear.
He landed one of Hollywood’s hottest jobs: directing The Hobbit, a prequel to the blockbuster Lord of the Rings trilogy expected by 2011.
Del Toro is known for making two kinds of movies. Artful, gothic Spanish-language tales, including the Oscar-nominated Pan’s Labyrinth and the eerie Devil’s Backbone. And colorful English-language popcorn movies such as Mimic, Blade II and 2004’s original Hellboy.
The sequel fuses the two — a rock-’em, sock-’em action-comedy with a measure of depth. The allegory about love and loneliness is told through a giant devil, played by Ron Perlman (The Name of the Rose), who protects the world by fighting off supernatural evildoers while wishing he could stop fighting with his human girlfriend.
“Guillermo’s creatures are more human than the true humans,” says Perlman, who worked with del Toro on Blade II as well as 1993’s Cronos, the director’s first movie. “The fairies and the monsters have a humanity that is much more the stuff we should aspire to.”
Hellboy fights for humanity and wants to be a part of it — so much so that he shaves his horns down to nubs. But he often loathes himself as much as the public fears him. He wonders if he has more in common with beasts, ghouls and phantoms.
“In adult movies, R-rated movies, monsters can signify many different things,” says del Toro. “But in the (PG-13) Hellboy mythology, they symbolize our imperfections and how we can embrace them. If we were more eager and willing to accept otherness, things would be better between people.”
Quoting Hellboy’s sidekick, Abe Sapien, a psychic, blue-skinned fish-man, he adds, ” ‘All we freaks have is each other.’ That’s the story of our lives.”
With his husky frame and soft, raspy voice, the 43-year-old resembles a kind of cheerful, Spanish-accented Godfather.
For a master of monsters, he tends to find joy instead of terror in them. He talks of sharing spooky stories with daughters Mariana, 12, and Marisa, 7, while drawing assorted critters with them, and has fond boyhood memories of clutching his father, just as frightened, during 1979’s Alien.
His religious grandmother instilled a passion for both the supernatural and separating right from wrong. “It was a lot of Catholic scare about sin and hell. ‘You’re going to be in purgatory if you’re not careful, and blah, blah, blah … Maybe even if you are careful!’ ” he says with a laugh.
Unease can be triggered by even his own fans. During a recent fan screening of Hellboy II, del Toro is full of both anxiety and eagerness. For the first reel, he frets with the projectionist over perfecting sound levels, and when the loud rumbling of a later action scene suddenly goes quiet, he pricks up his ears to detect audience response.
The original Hellboy, based on a cult-favorite comic by artist Mike Mignola, earned a healthy but not spectacular $60 million, then developed a strong following on DVD. After the Oscar foreign-language nomination for Pan’s Labyrinth, del Toro fought for a sequel, and he has plans for a third if this one is successful.
“I’m eager to explore themes that lend themselves easily to metaphor,” he says. “The fantastic is the only tool we have nowadays to explain spirituality to a generation that refuses to believe in dogma or religion. Superhero movies create a kind of mythology. Creature movies, horror movies, create at least a belief in something beyond.”
Annalee Newitz, editor of the sci-fi blog io9.com, says del Toro is popular because in an age of fear, he practices the opposite of xenophobia.
“It’s xenophilia,” she says. “His creatures seem really different from us and really scary, but they might not be really scary. They just look different and act weird, but they could also be our friends or actually be cooler than us.”
Read the rest HERE
How about 20 questions with Peter Jackson and Guillermo Del Toro regarding the the Hobbit movie? Sounds great, just submit a question to the link below, but first read the note from PJ:
Click HERE to register for the “Unexpected Party” which will be taking place at these times in respective time zones:
Los Angeles (Pacific) Saturday 24 May 1 pm
New York (Eastern) Saturday 24 May 4 pm
London Saturday 24 May 9 pm
Paris, Berlin, Rome Saturday 24 May 10 pm
SydneySunday 25 May 6 am
Wellington, Auckland Sunday 25 May 8 am
Heres an interesting article from TheOneRing.net on Guillermo Del Toro and his plans for the upcoming Hobbit movies:
How did this whole process get started?
GDT: I met Peter (Jackson) a long time ago when we were planning on doing ‘Halo’ together, I really love how they have that setup in New Zealand, I call it ‘Hollywood the way God intended it’. New Zealand has all the technical advantages when doing a big movie and you are shooting it in paradise, both in terms of artistic freedom and commitment.
When ‘Halo’ didn’t happen, Peter and I stayed in contact on a regular basis, and last winter I started getting inklings that ‘The Hobbit’ may come this way, mainly from the studio. The first thing I said was that I would only be interested if Peter was involved and the (New Line Lawsuit) problem gets resolved. When that issue was resolved I got a call from Peter and we chatted, and it started from then, it was my Christmas gift!
Fans are all abuzz about ‘The Second Film’, can you tell some of your plans for it?
GDT: You know, I traveled to New Zealand just a little while ago, and one of the main reasons for going was to sit down and talk about the second film. ‘The Hobbit’, the book, is really one self-contained film, so for the second movie we sat down and worked it out. When we did this we got really excited because this second film is not a ‘tag on’, it’s not ‘filler’, it’s an integral part of telling the story of those 50 years of history lost in the narrative. There will be certain things that we will see from the first movie but from a different point of view, but it will feel like a volume, in the 5 volumes of the entire story. It will not feel like a bridge, I’ve been hearing it called ‘a bridge film’, it’s not, it’s an integral chapter of the story, and I think we’re all on the same page.
You will be moving down to New Zealand for 4 years, is that right?
GDT: Approximately, my whole family, but the first stages of design and R&D will be done with me going back and fourth from LA and New Zealand because there are a lot of things I need to put to bed before I finally move to New Zealand. I’m going much sooner than my relatives would like!
We will officially be doing a lot of prep on ‘The Hobbit’ this summer, there is so much to do, its amazing. Just the reforestation of The Shire, re planting all those trees and plants will take months, and we’re going to be as exact as possible.
Films like ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ used a few studio sets to simulate outdoors, will you be doing the same for ‘The Hobbit’ or will you be making use of New Zealand’s wilderness like Peter did?
GDT: I think green screen photography is exactly like CGI, it is a tool, I don’t think it should be overused. Things like ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ and ‘The Devil’s Backbone’ are incredibly dependent on location, we shot on location for more than half the time. Those locations can be enhanced by technology however, both digital and physical. What I would like to avoid is the recreation of the natural environments in CG, I don’t like doing that. The movie is essentially a journey movie, I think you need to use locations as much as possible.
You’ll be using WETA Digital for the effects?
GDT: Yes, the essential elements for keeping continuity are on track, in the last few weeks I’ve been chatting with a ton of people via email, phone, and in person from the previous films. People like Andy Serkis, Sir Ian McKellen, Howard Shore, John Howe, Gino Acevedo, Richard Taylor next week I’m meeting Alan Lee. I’m doing this to ensure that whatever we do we keep continuity with the other films, yes it’s a world that is slightly more golden at the beginning, a very innocent environment.
What I’m trying to do is keep the elements in place but allow you to feel a progression from ‘The Hobbit’ until ‘The Return of the King’. I believe ‘The Hobbit’ is a very crucial volume in The Lord of the Rings, it is a narrative that starts out very much in an innocent and golden way. It is permeated from England going through World War One, so there is a loss of innocence and a darker tone as the book and the film progresses. We’ll be doing that in the first film, taking you from a time of more purity to a darker reality throughout the film, but I think that is in the spirit of the book. All these guys, Alan Lee, John Howe, these guys are integral for us to map out that progress in the two movies, and allow you to completely blend in to the universe that is already in place. But this will be a progression, it should not feel at the start of the film that this is the same time (as the beginning of ‘Fellowship’). 50 years in Shire time, is not the same as 50 years in human time, if you think about how our world has changed in only 7 or 8 years, you can think of it as decades of turmoil, those 50 years in Middle-earth.
Do you have any roles cast?
GDT: Well, I had the most charming meeting with Sir Ian, and all bureaucracy pending, he’s on board, as is Andy Serkis. We will continue giving you progress reports as the occur. It is our intention that we will not lose any of the key elements.
What will differ from your films versus Peter’s?
The only thing I will be pushing for more in these films that the other three are full animatronics and animatronic creatures enhanced with CGI, as opposed to CGI creatures themselves. We really want to take the state-of-the-art animatronics and take a leap ten years into the future with the technology we will develop for the creatures in the movie. We have every intention to do for animatronics and special effects what the other films did for virtual reality.
Another thing people will notice, at the beginning of the film will be the palette, that will be slightly different, the world will be the same but it will be a more ‘golden’ world, a more wide-eyed world. But by no means will we depart from the canon, we will take the three previous films as canon. When I become part of a world that I love, such as this, I really come with a lot of enthusiasm and hard work, and we know we are recreating and creating a world that is part of the mythos of millions of people and we will approach it as passionately and respectfully as it needs to be taken.
Check out the explosive new trailer for Hellboy II: The Golden Army over at SlashFilm.
The big guy is back with a whole new adventure filled with a new slew of otherworldly bad guys to fight in Hellboy II: The Golden Army. Keep tabs on things with new website:
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Yahoo! Movies has the trailer for Guillermo Del Toro’s next film titled, The Orphanage, and its being billed as one of the better horror movies in the last few years… After watching the trailer I can’t say that I disagree with that possibility.
Click HERE to see the trailer for The Orphanage at Yahoo! Movies.
A few tidbits about what you’ll find on the new HBII Production Site: www.hellboymovie.com
- ONSITE: Welcome note from Guillermo del Toro personally, check out his first blog entry from the Hellboy 2 set in Budapest.
- NEWS: Terrific Hellboy 2 news hits, feature articles and early cast interviews featured on various publications.
- GALLERY: Guillermo del Toro’s amazing HBII Scrapbook- including the incredible concept art and descriptions of each image.
- HBTV: Watch Abe Sapien, live from the BRPD Headquarters as he gives you a personal welcome message to the site! You can embed Abe’s welcome video and share it on your Facebook profile as well.
- Message Board: Chat with your fellow fans of Guillermo del Toro and everything that is Hellboy 2!
Synopsis:
With a signature blend of action, humor and character-based spectacle, the saga of the world’s toughest, kitten-loving hero from Hell continues to unfold in Hellboy 2: The Golden Army. Bigger muscle, badder weapons and more ungodly villains arrive in an epic vision of imagination from Oscar®-nominated director Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy).
After an ancient truce existing between humankind and the invisible realm of the fantastic is broken, hell on Earth is ready to erupt. A ruthless leader who treads the world above and the one below defies his bloodline and awakens an unstoppable army of creatures. Now, it’s up to the planet’s toughest, roughest superhero to battle the merciless dictator and his marauders. He may be red. He may be horned. He may be misunderstood. But when you need the job done right, it’s time to call in Hellboy (Ron Perlman).
Along with his expanding team in the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense—pyrokinetic girlfriend Liz (Selma Blair), aquatic empath Abe (Doug Jones) and protoplasmic mystic Johann—the BPRD will travel between the surface strata and the unseen magical one, where creatures of fantasy become corporeal. And Hellboy, a creature of two worlds who’s accepted by neither, must choose between the life he knows and an unknown destiny that beckons him.
Official Website: www.hellboymovie.com
Release date: July 11, 2008
PLAY
