Actor Ron Perlman dished about Guillermo Del Toro’s unrealized Hellboy finale at Ottawa ComicCon on Saturday.

Fans of Del Toro’s epic comic book adaptation were devastated when the director’s planned conclusion to the trilogy fell through a few years ago. So was Perlman, who’d brought the titular soft-hearted demon to life in both Hellboy and Hellboy II: The Golden Army.

“The third movie – I hate to do this to you guys, but boy did we f*ck up badly by not making that.”

Hellboy III would have tested how far its hero would go to avoid fulfilling “his destiny to destroy mankind” – and what he would sacrifice to save his family. Perlman revealed that the plot would have revolved around Hellboy’s twin sons, conceived with pyrokinetic girlfriend Liz.

“One of them is gonna look like her and one of them is gonna look like him,” he elaborated, hinting that one of the boys would be positioned to bring about the end of the world.

Del Toro has been abundantly clear in recent years that the third film is not in the cards, but Perlman seems to hold out hope.

“I’m still willing to,” he said, eliciting cheers from the crowd.

Perlman doesn’t have much fondness for this year’s reboot; when a fan claimed to have seen “all” the Hellboy movies, Perlman quipped, “I hope you didn’t see all of ‘em.”

He’s also not a fan of last year’s Pacific Rim: Uprising (a sequel to 2013’s Pacific Rim, also directed by Del Toro). Responding to a questioner disappointed that Perlman wasn’t in the sequel, he retorted, “We were all disappointed that they made a sequel.”

Any chance that he may appear in a future Pacific Rim movie? “They wouldn’t dare,” he growled.

Perlman clearly has a high level of affection for Del Toro, with whom he has made six movies, starting with Del Toro’s debut Cronos. He still has the handwritten letter the novice director wrote him “extolling the virtues of my work, all of which had been done under masks” and inviting him to star in Cronos “as a good luck charm.”

“He was studying the work of great American male-up movies so he could make his own monsters in Mexico,” Perlman recalls. “It was the most beautiful letter I’d ever read.”

Perlman added that he became fast friends with Mexican creature-feature master after sharing a meal with him. “I like the way that man eats,” he explained, noting that Del Toro skips straight to the dessert course. “So do I!” he added.

He’s also very fond of his non-human co-stars, particularly Hellboy’s clowder of cats. “There were 55 of them at any given time in those scenes. They were adorable.”

The gruff actor, who spent much of the Q&A screwing with questioners (“Don’t call me Ron, okay? I’m just kidding, that’s my f*ckin’ name!”)  and cracking dirty jokes, says he couldn’t resist slipping the cats some treats in between scenes (annoying the wranglers to no end). “I’m a big sucker.”

Guest: Ron Perlman

Venue: Ottawa ComicCon, EY Centre, Ottawa ON

Date: Saturday, May 11/2019