Doug Jones, Guillermo Del Toro, And "Blood And Iron"

"You're angry, Abe...good...annnddd....SCENE!"

TwitchGuru: I found it interesting that Doug Jones, who performed the physicality of Abe Sapien in the movie but not any of the dialogue, does the voice in both animated movies.

Tad: In the beginning we were using everybody from the movie so we started off with David Hyde Pierce. At that time Abe and Liz were only in the first movie for a couple of sequences. They did not have the subplot that they have in the final movie so he only had ten or twelve lines, and most of those were, "Look out Liz!", "Get down!", "Let me shoot him!", things like that. So there was nothing in the script to challenge him. Secondly he didn't do publicity for the "Hellboy" movie, not because he was turning up his nose at it, but he felt that the role was all Doug Jones. He was the presence. Doug did all the red carpet stuff. I think he was acknowledging that Doug was the actor who created the character, and Doug is actually doing the voice in the live-action "Hellboy 2".

TwitchGuru: I thought he did really well.

Tad: Oh yeah, I really thought he brought a unique presence to it. He just felt totally natural to me as soon as he started looping lines. Remember even though Doug is quote, "the guy in the costume," he creates the character, he does a back story for the character, and he's the guy the other actors are reacting to. It's not the same as the old Abbot and Costello movie where a guy in an ape suit is running around. No, here's a guy creating a character.

TwitchGuru: What was Guillermo del Toro's interaction with the animated movies? You said he spearheaded the animation initiative, but was he involved day to day?

Tad: No. He might have been had he been in town but this basically coincided with "Pan's Labyrinth". Guillermo got things started, he found me the composer, and we updated him on everything. He saw the scripts and story reels and all of that, but he had a masterpiece that he was working on, and it's probably good for all of us that he didn't take time away from that to mess around with our project. In the future I think he'd like to be more involved, and it's purely going to be a matter of timing. With six Oscar nominations your life suddenly gets much busier. So again, we'd love to have him on board, but perhaps he's now got the clout to do a few more movies.

Hellboy letting 'em have it with the Samaritan.

TwitchGuru: What's "Hellboy: Blood and Iron" about?

Tad: Basically "Blood and Iron" is a vampire tale set in central Europe. This vampiress that Professor Broom defeated decades ago , well before there was a Hellboy, has been brought back, or is in the process of being brought back, and Broom's haunted by visions. He goes on the assignment himself, which is the first time he's gone out in 17 years, so Hellboy's more concerned with him than perhaps his own safety. And then it gets into a haunted house tale. The ghosts of the victims are haunting this house and they are attached to the torture equipment used by Erzsebet. It's a pretty cool movie. Basically it's the Hammer film that they couldn't afford to do.

TwitchGuru: And when does it get released?

Tad: It'll be on Cartoon Network on March 10 and out on DVD May 8th. So there's less of a wait between the TV and DVD release.

TwitchGuru: Which is probably good.

Tad: Yeah I think so. I mean the only reason for the wait the first time around was, literally, the amount of time it took to make the DVDs.