- Notes provided by Universal Pictures. -

In 2004, visionary writer/director GUILLERMO DEL TORO brought MIKE MIGNOLA's comic-book hero Hellboy (RON PERLMAN of Blade II, Alien: Resurrection) to the screen. The overly muscled occult detective, complete with horns, tail and hard-boiled attitude, was an everyman who'd become a favorite of fanboys around the world, including del Toro. Del Toro introduced the reluctant crimefighter to a global audience with the feature Hellboy, and his film's wit, action and ingenious practical effects launched a critical and commercial hit for comic lovers and general audiences alike.
The filmmaker's epic odyssey continues with the action-thriller Hellboy II: The Golden Army, the feature follow-up to his 2006 triple Oscar®-winning masterpiece, Pan's Labyrinth. Bringing bigger muscle, badder weapons, multitudes of monsters and a little domestic conflict at home, our favorite kitten-loving red hero is back. And this time, he kicks even more evil ass.
Hellboy fights the good fight when duty calls from his employer: the top-secret Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (a clandestine bureau created in 1943 by Roosevelt that uses secret technology, mysterious powers and a network of operatives with otherworldly powers to defend the world against the more violent supernatural- also known as the B.P.R.D.). He would, however, much rather kick back with a cigar, six-pack, his pyrokinetic girlfriend Liz Sherman (SELMA BLAIR of Legally Blonde, In Good Company) and their clutter of cats. But destiny has bigger plans for them.
After an ancient truce between humankind and the original sons of the Earth is broken, all hell is about to break loose. The anarchical underworld Prince Nuada (LUKE GOSS of Blade II, Unearthed) has grown weary of centuries of deference to mankind. He plots to awaken a long-dormant army of killing machines that will return what belongs to his people; all magical creatures shall finally be free to roam again. Now, only Hellboy can stop the dark ruler and save our world from annihilation.
Joining the wise-cracking, amber-eyed demon and his flammable girlfriend are returning principal Hellboy cast-including the bureau's brilliant aquatic empath Abe Sapien (DOUG JONES of Pan's Labyrinth, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer) and
B.P.R.D. bureaucrat Tom Manning (JEFFREY TAMBOR of Superhero Movie, Arrested Development). Acclaimed actor JOHN HURT (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, V for Vendetta) is also back for the latest chapter in the franchise as Hellboy's surrogate dad (and savior from the Nazis) Professor Trevor Broom. New to the team is the now public face of the formerly clandestine B.P.R.D., protoplasmic mystic Johann Krauss, a role shared by JOHN ALEXANDER (Mighty Joe Young, Gorillas in the Mist: The Story of Dian Fossey) and newcomer JAMES DODD; Krauss is voiced by SETH MACFARLANE, creator of FOX's smash-hit Family Guy and the man behind many of that show's signature voices.
Nuada's merciless drive for revenge is balanced by the regal compassion of his twin, the ethereal beauty Princess Nuala (ANNA WALTON of The Mutant Chronicles, A Girl and a Gun). ROY DOTRICE (Alien Hunter, Amadeus) plays their anguished father King Balor and BRIAN STEELE (Hellboy) portrays the Prince's henchman Mr. Wink, plus multiple additional characters in del Toro's world. Movement artist Jones joins Steele in portraying assorted practical-effects beasts, including the king's highest court Chamberlain and the stunning creature that is the Angel of Death.
For this battle, the B.P.R.D. must travel between the surface strata of the humans and the hidden magical one, where creatures of fantasy rule. And Hellboy, a creature of both worlds who's accepted by neither, must choose between the life he knows and an unknown destiny that beckons.
Hellboy II: The Golden Army's behind-the-camera crew is an accomplished team of artists, including longtime del Toro collaborators: Academy Award®-winning cinematographer GUILLERMO NAVARRO (Pan's Labyrinth, Night at the Museum), production designer STEPHEN SCOTT (Hellboy, Doom), editor BERNAT VILAPLANA (Pan's Labyrinth, La Monja) and creature and makeup-effects head MIKE ELIZALDE (Hellboy, X-Men: The Last Stand). Joining the production for the latest Hellboy chapter are costume designer SAMMY SHELDON (V for Vendetta, Black Hawk Down), visual effects supervisor MICHAEL J. WASSEL (Evan Almighty, 2 Fast 2 Furious) and triple Oscar®-nominated composer DANNY ELFMAN (Spider-Man 2, Wanted).
With a screenplay by del Toro, Hellboy II: The Golden Army's screen story was written by del Toro & Mike Mignola, based upon the Dark Horse comic book created by co-executive producer Mignola. Also returning for the film are noted producers LAWRENCE GORDON (Hellboy, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Die Hard), Lloyd Levin (Hellboy, United 93) and president and founder of Dark Horse Comics MIKE RICHARDSON (Hellboy, 30 Days of Night). CHRIS SYMES (Resident Evil, AVP: Alien vs. Predator) serves as executive producer.
ABOUT THE MAIN CHARACTERS

Hellboy
Born in the flames of hell and brought to Earth as an infant to perpetrate evil, Hellboy was rescued from occult Nazi forces by the benevolent Dr. Trevor Broom who raised him to be the unlikeliest of heroes. Now, it's up to the planet's toughest, roughest, kitten-loving superhero to battle a merciless prince and his army of marauders. He may be red, horned and misunderstood, but when you need the job done right, it's time to call in Hellboy. It doesn't hurt that the enormous red bruiser brings his right hand of doom (a virtual "sledgehammer" in the form of an invulnerable red stone attached to his forearm). If that doesn't do the trick, he's got "Big Baby," a shotgun/revolver hybrid with bullets as big as baby food jars.
Liz
Pyrokinetic Liz Sherman has only begun to embrace the awesome powers that first manifested themselves at the age of 11 and tragically claimed the lives of her family. Shunned as a child because of her gifts, the shy Liz found not only a home in the B.P.R.D., but the love of her life in Hellboy. Tired of feeling like a freak, Liz warily accepts her team's new role as no-longer-hidden heroes. When needed, she chants: "The fire is not my enemy, it is a part of me," to unleash a barrage of flaming bolts upon any enemy who threatens friends or innocents.
Abe
An aquatic empath who is almost 150 years old, the brilliant Abe Sapien has the psychogenic power to read objects and know their past or the future. The consummate gentleman, Abe's inordinate kindness is matched only by his passion for delectable, rotten eggs. The Ichthyo Sapien must use an Aqua-Lung to provide oxygen to his body when outside water and holds a very special place in his heart for the mysterious Princess Nuala who shares some of his gifts and his sense of justice.

Johann
The newest member of the B.P.R.D., Johann Krauss is a protoplasmic mystic who can briefly take control of entities, both mechanical and organic, and reactivate their neural senses. Schooled in the art of teleplasty and clad in a thick containment suit that holds in his gaseous ectoplasm, Johann's ability to inhabit the inanimate will serve Hellboy, Liz and Abe quite well as they search for the monsters who go bump in the night...

Manning
Special Agent Tom Manning, chief FBI liaison to the B.P.R.D., has spent decades suppressing the existence of the secret group of superheroes from the public. Though he has averted many a PR catastrophe for the team (and parried endless fodder from tabloids eager to report on a devil-man), S.A. Manning has finally been pushed over the edge by Hellboy's exploits in Manhattan. Now that the B.P.R.D. has been unveiled to a stunned world, Manning's job is on the line, and Washington has demanded Johann Krauss to be the new public face for the formerly secret agency.

Prince Nuada
A ruthless leader who treads the world above and the one below, Prince Nuada has defied his bloodline to awaken an unstoppable army of creatures known as the Golden Army. He has returned from exile to the kingdom of Bethmoora to reclaim the land and the freedom he believes has been taken from his people. To make it happen, Nuada knows he will need the help of the good, the bad...and the worst.

Princess Nuala
The willowy, timeless beauty Princess Nuala has an uncanny resemblance to her brutal twin brother, Prince Nuada-down to the fine scars that mar her perfect face. She is the benevolent yin to her brother's wicked yang. The favored child of King Balor, Nuala is entrusted with the final piece of the Royal Crown of Bethmoora, a gold treasure that will either bring peace to the universe, or reign destruction upon it.

Wink
Prince Nuada's monstrous troll henchman, Mr. Wink, does the bidding of his vicious master-no matter how violent the instructions. From helping to set free a horde of fanged tooth fairies on an innocent crowd to scouring the Troll Market looking for a fight, Wink is a huge slab of an ugly creature. His gigantic club fist and extendable iron mace is quite the match for Hellboy and his right hand of doom.

The Angel of Death
The timeless and terrifying Angel of Death has been waiting in her underground lair for untold years to bear a mysterious prophecy to Liz and Hellboy...one that will affect their today and the future of the world. With a heart only of dust and sand-and only the occasional company of the Bethmoora Goblin-she will give two members of the
B.P.R.D. a choice: gain new life or usher in an era of death.

ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
Bigger, Badder...Still Red:
Hellboy Returns

Hellboy's first adventures were published by Dark Horse Comics in 1994. Guillermo del Toro's debut as a feature film director came a year earlier with the critically acclaimed horror film Cronos, starring Ron Perlman as the thug in search of an immortality device. As del Toro's work gained international attention, he kept his eye on Mignola's creation as a possible future project. "I had always been a Mike Mignola fan," the director offers. "I fell in love with the brooding, Gothic, atmospheric work he was doing. When I was shooting Mimic in 1997, the best part of the day was going to the comic book shop to look for more Hellboy issues. By then, I thought it was taking a direction that made sense for a movie."
Del Toro admits he envisioned a filmed version of Hellboy just the way that Mignola wrote him in his comics: "a blue-collar guy-a plumber or an electrician-who comes in with a box of tools and says, 'Where is the leak?' and goes at fixing the leak. But he is a very jaded, reluctant investigator; his method of investigation is to beat the crap out of a monster."
The filmmaker's interest in turning the demon into a film star surprised the pragmatic Mignola, who thought the tales of his antiheroes would forever stay on the page. "I never in a billion years believed Hellboy would be a movie, and when it was discussed, I said, 'Sure, good luck.' But when I met Guillermo, I knew right away that if anyone was going to do it, I sure as hell hoped it would be him. We agreed right away that Hellboy had to be Ron Perlman."
In a world of caped heroes who sport chiseled good looks and profess all-American values, audiences found it refreshing to have a good guy look so, well, bad. Provides producer Mike Richardson, "Hellboy is not your traditional superhero. This is a character who has horns and a tail and looks like the devil; he shaves his horns off to try and look as human as possible. He's a blue-collar hero who just wants to be one of us."
During the five years of development before Hellboy was greenlit, the creative team behind the project kept its focus. "In this period, a number of offers to make Hellboy came in," recalls blockbuster producer Lawrence Gordon, "but it was about five years before Guillermo had the commercial track record for us to get the movie made in the way he imagined it. His artistic credibility and success in the films he created during that time-The Devil's Backbone and Blade II-clinched that."
The first film, starring Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones and Jeffrey Tambor as members of the elite B.P.R.D. was produced by Revolution Studios with Dark Horse Entertainment, Lawrence Gordon Productions and Starlite Films. It was met with solid commercial success and acheived $100 million at the global box office, as well as finding an enormous audience through DVD sales.
With impressive figures for the action-thriller and del Toro's growing international acclaim from the adult fairy tale Pan's Labyrinth, del Toro had the pull to get the second chapter in Hellboy's continuing adventures greenlit. Changes in the film business, however, would bring the Hellboy sequel to a new studio. "Because Revolution closed shop, we were able to bring the sequel back to Universal where, many years before, we had originally started developing Hellboy," says producer Lloyd Levin. "The possibility of making the sequel at Universal was a thrill for us because we always loved the idea that Hellboy could be part of the great legacy of Universal Monsters." (Notably, every Sunday as a child, del Toro would watch two Universal Monster movies, from Frankenstein to Creature From the Black Lagoon, at his hometown theater).
This time, del Toro wanted to tell Red's (Liz's nickname for Hellboy) developing story on a grander scale, including many more practical creatures that inhabited the universe Mignola had created. The man producer Gordon says "eats, sleeps and breathes film," admits he aspired to bring Hellboy to both the dark corners of the fairy-tale world and out in the open to a blissfully ignorant public. As before, he designed at least half of his imagined goblins, trolls and creatures of the night to be played by actors in elaborately designed prosthetic makeup. Puppeteers would enhance the range of their movements with radio-controlled animatronics.
"Mignola's universe demands a strong physical component to the creatures," says del Toro. Especially when that world also includes creatures who have sprung from del Toro's imagination: such as Prince Nuada's faithful henchman, the troll Wink; the enigmatic, winged Angel of Death; and an array of other goblins, chamberlains and nasties.
As del Toro drafted the sequel's screenplay, he knew he again needed to infuse CGI to step in when practical effects were not possible. Double Negative Visual Effects came on board to execute his vision of the merciless robotic Golden Army that King Balor, the one-armed ruler of Bethmoora, had created a millennium ago, as well as the unstoppable Elemental creature and other fantasy effects.
For Hellboy II, del Toro and Mignola also wanted more layers to the story than they were able to achieve in Hellboy, as they didn't have to worry about the origin story that the first film well covered. "Mythology and folklore have always been present in the 'Hellboy' comics, and we didn't go there in the first film," Mignola notes. "So instead of Rasputin, Nazis, mad scientists and H.P. Lovecraft-type stuff, we went for the supernatural."
After working out the storyline with Mignola, del Toro spent two-and-a-half years writing the screenplay for Hellboy II: The Golden Army. He ignored the usual sequel conventions, as the background story had been clearly established in the first film and focused the script on the throughline of a dark fairy tale in which the world of magical creatures who have lived underneath humans for centuries finally have enough and start a rebellion. It was time for Hellboy to make a choice: which side of the war is he on?
"There was no need to recap or re-explain who everyone is," del Toro provides. "We just get on with it. It's a completely new story, a dark, poignant fairy tale. You can take the most dire, melodramatic arc and plug it into a movie, but as long as you're acting it with monsters, it already has another meaning. The beauty of these stories is that, in an unrecognizable universe, you have very recognizable human emotions."
Saving the world is a hell of a job, but Hellboy is ready; it's what he was born to do. Help comes to Red with an assortment of fellow freaks, ensconced in a high-tech bunker at the B.P.R.D.'s New Jersey headquarters. Officially, the organization doesn't exist, but a few stunned civilians have glimpsed the burly red gunslinger and his otherwordly cohorts in action. And like it or not, it's time Hellboy met the public.
When last we met, Hellboy had saved humanity from a centuries-old mad monk who was hell-bent on raining destruction upon Earth. Now, he's about to face a prince who's been biding his time until he can lead the creatures of the dark to take back what used to be theirs. On the personal front, Hellboy is having an even tougher time at home. He and Liz have been together for about a year, and the honeymoon is decidedly over.
With the script in place, the filmmakers would begin the search for the monsters and freaks who fit naturally into Hellboy's universe. Fortunately, it took little more than a phone call to get the close-knit original cast back in their B.P.R.D. uniforms.
B.P.R.D. to Bethmoora:
Casting the Film

Hellboy wouldn't be Hellboy without Ron Perlman returning in the title role. Fortunately, the actor was up for getting back into the boots of his favorite role, a character he describes as "a complete underachieving, lazy slob...a beer-drinking, football-watching average American guy who has no desire to be a superhero," explains Perlman. "He just happens to have these abilities commensurate with where he's from and who he is. His idea of a perfect day is pizza and beer and watching The Three Stooges and Marx Brothers movies. His extraordinary superhuman traits are coincidental and not something he aspires to."
Perlman also looked forward to working again with his longtime director. Of del Toro, he states, "The depth of his intellect and accumulated knowledge, based on this voracious curiosity to read anything about why people need to tell stories-including all types of mythology from all cultures-is what sets him apart." Also, he agreed with the filmmaker's fascination to tell this type of story. "Guillermo is a great storyteller, because he understands the need for people to pass down fables and myths, as well as to look at the huge, errors that are made by humans as a result of their frailties and vulnerabilities."
Del Toro also knew Hellboy couldn't return without his sarcastic romantic sidekick, Liz, back for another round of dazzling pyrokinesis. Perlman's partner in crime fighting would again be actress Selma Blair, the only performer the director and producers felt could do Liz justice. Says del Toro, "In the comic, Liz is always very brooding, very dark, distant; she's never relaxed. Selma nailed that."
Blair respected the fact that fans of the comic book and film franchise have a special place in their hearts for Liz. The pyrokinetic remained beautiful, yet untouchable, to anyone for fear that she would accidentally harm them...until she met Hellboy. Blair reflects, "Hellboy has some really die-hard fans, and all of us are grateful that their devotion has given us the chance to tell the story with Guillermo."
As Liz and Red move into a relationship, they are coping with the same irritations as most couples...plus some unique issues that occur when a recovering demon falls in love with a fire starter. "Petty things are really amplified when you have superpowers," laughs Blair, whose character has finally come to embrace the pyrokinetic energy that used to threaten everyone who came near. "When Hellboy and Liz have a row, it's not just, 'Okay, I'm going for a walk, see you later,'" she explains. "It's more like, 'I'm going to blow up this damn kitchen and will see you later.'"
Again cast as the rotten-egg-eating, brilliant aquatic empath Abe Sapien was actor and movement specialist Doug Jones. Of his character, del Toro explains: "Being half fish and half mammal, Abe possesses a unique frontal lobe. Much like a dolphin's, it can receive and transmit information and images locked in objects or people. Abe is also the egghead of the group in terms of occult knowledge."
Before and since his first Hellboy film, the longtime del Toro collaborator has carved out a fascinating niche in creature performance. Recently, as both Pale Man and the title character in Pan's Labyrinth, intergalactic indentured servant Norin Radd in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and a series of irradiated imps battling The Rock in DOOM, the 6'4" Jones had been keeping quite busy.
Foremost, Jones was happy to tackle Abe again as, frankly, "there was much more to do this time." He reflects, "Abe has so much more decision-making and character development...and he wields a weapon this time." Jones laughingly adds, "Me with a gun-that's funny."
Jones also appreciated the fact that his water-dwelling character would finally get a chance to experience true love, this time with the enchanting Princess Nuala. The only problem is that she's eternally connected to her evil twin. Jones reflects, "What a first love does to a person and their decision-making powers...it makes us silly in our adolescence. Abe's going through a certain adolescent period of life, and it's a nice chance to revisit those teenage years."
Tasked to not play only Abe, a process that took up to five hours a day in the makeup chair, Jones agreed to portray both the fleshy court Chamberlain, who lives in service to King Balor, as well as the elusive, multiwinged Angel of Death, who offers an unimaginable choice to Liz. Compliments fellow B.P.R.D. member Perlman of Jones' flexibility in roles: "Doug truly amazes me. He's one of these guys that the more you give him to do, the more he'll amaze you. He's such a humble, soft-spoken guy who never calls attention to himself. He gives each role major thought and has the ability to execute it every time. If you do 30 takes with Doug, they're all going to be good."
To add insult to Hellboy's injury, the agency's Washington bosses have saddled the B.P.R.D. with a new leader, one who can contain the damage from Hellboy's accidental "outing" of the agency to the public. No longer can the team hide in Trenton, New Jersey, under the guise of the Squeaky Clean Management Company. Once a flesh-and-blood human, Dr. Johann Krauss now exists only as ectoplasmic gas inside a containment suit. He's a by-the-book type, and expects the same from his team, especially the grousing Hellboy. Unfortunately for him, every time he issues an edict in his crisp German accent, Hellboy sees red.
The voice of Krauss is provided by Seth MacFarlane, and the movements are shared by John Alexander (who also plays the Bethmoora Goblin) and James Dodd. Dodd explains the look of his character: "Johann's in a containment suit, which looks like one of those old-fashioned deep-sea diving suits, and he's got a head with a glass bubble on it. Years ago, he went from a human form into ectoplasm and created this containment suit, so-in a more humanoid form-he'd be more readily accepted by people. He has special powers and can reanimate objects by flipping open a finger cap on his gloves, releasing ectoplasmic smoke into the dead and ask questions of it." Curiously, Dodd had to navigate this world while gazing through a glass pane that would occasionally fog up on him.
Also returning to the series as B.P.R.D. agent Tom Manning, the bureaucrat whose sole purpose is to keep Hellboy in check, is Jeffrey Tambor. Tambor, who wasn't allowed to read comics as a child, has had a chance to catch up on his youth after these outings with del Toro. He offers an astute theory about the appeal of the property to fans: "What I like about all these creatures is that I think we all think we're ugly and we all think we're monsters...yet we have great love in us. That's the thing that we overcome the most, and it's a hard thing to do. So, I don't think there's anybody who cannot relate to Hellboy. We're all Hellboy, Liz and Abe. A few of us are Tom Manning. Thankfully."
Everything shifts for the B.P.R.D. after it responds to an emergency at an Upper East Side auction house in Manhattan. Each team member is stretched to the limit by the chain of cataclysmic events unleashed on that rainy September night by one very ticked-off son of the earth: Prince Nuada Silverlance, exile of the Bethmoora Kingdom. The self-appointed revolutionary of the elves, fairiefolk and creatures of the shadows has been subsiding on the crumbs of the industrialized world, while his beloved planet withers under human masters. It was not always so, and the prince is determined to change the balance of power, even if it means defying his father and endangering his beloved twin sister.
"The Prince is a great villain because he is very dangerous and a great fighter, but he also happens to have a strong moral stand on what he does and why he does it," explains del Toro. "I wrote the part with Luke Goss in mind, and he delivered all the way."
Goss, who portrayed the vampire Nomak for del Toro in Blade II, sympathized with the Prince and trained hard to make him a worthy adversary. "He aims to balance the scales by the most succinct means possible," says Goss. "I can see his point. He wants to enjoy and not destroy the planet. When he walks into Blackwood's auction house, he sees people sitting there with no idea about what they're trying to buy. They're selling his history, and it outrages him."
The prince hasn't surfaced with the intention of taking on Hellboy, but no matter. He's ready to engage him physically and psychologically. Nuada also knows how to reach the secret places in Hellboy's soul. At a crucial moment, he calls him out and forces him to face who is he is and where his loyalties lie. "Guillermo has upped the ante of what Hellboy's going through in this movie," says Perlman. "Eventually, Hellboy has to ask himself why he's working for a bureau dedicated to neutralizing creatures who are really his own kind."
British actress Anna Walton was cast as Princess Nuala. Walton was drawn to the part by the chance to play a character divided by her own conscience. She offers, "Everyone has a sort of evil person in one ear and a little angel in the other ear. Nuala's brother is the heart and the passion of her. She admires it in one respect, but knows that she has to quash it, because it can't be. It's very hard for her, but, ultimately, she won't let him win."
Commends producer Levin of the team's Nuala: "Anna does a phenomenal job, because Nuala's this very ethereal character and, in the wrong hands, could just float away. But she does a great job grounding Nuala and making it seem possible that she would have a romantic relationship with a fish...I mean Abe Sapien."
Performer John Hurt was brought back for a key flashback sequence as Hellboy's father, Professor Trevor Broom, while Roy Dotrice was tasked to portray the wizened ruler of Bethmoora, King Balor. Brian Steele joined the cast to serve in four roles: as Prince Nuada's troll henchman, Wink, as well as the aptly named Cathedral Head (a scroll vendor who provides Princess Nuala with an invaluable gift from her father), bag-lady troll Fragglewump and Cronie Troll. A host of movement actors joined in to play creatures, from limb, tadpole and fish vendors to organ grinders and butcher guards. Of note, the butchers were originally intended as background creatures, but evolved into necessary guards for King Balor.
Beneath the Surface:
Designing Hellboy II: The Golden Army

This series of missions leads the B.P.R.D. team into secret new worlds that have been speculated upon for years but never before verified. Each of these lands was imagined in precise detail by del Toro and sketched in his ever-present notebook long before production began. Production designer Stephen Scott was tasked to bring these drawings to life.
Del Toro envisioned this chapter of Hellboy's adventures taking place not only in multiple locations, but also in new realms. He offers, "In the first film, we were always in the sewers and subways, never out in the open, among high society or humans. This takes us a bit more there and into the magical world." To do this, he would need to head to Hungary as well as to Ireland.
Undoubtedly, the most extravagant of these environments is del Toro's aptly named Troll Market. Located underneath the Brooklyn Bridge and reached via the back of a butcher shop, it's one of the few places where freaks don't feel like outcasts. Hellboy, Liz, Abe and Johann find the Troll Market by following a tip wrung from the lips of a reanimated tooth fairy, a wretched little beast with an insatiable appetite for calcium.
Magical beings are the only ones who can access the market, a haven crowded with potion vendors and artifact mongers that's been hidden from human eyes for millennia. "The Troll Market is like a souk you'd find in Morocco, except there are no humans," explains Ron Perlman. "It's Guillermo del Toro visiting the most extreme depths of his imagination."
Entered via a 12'-high circular doorway comprised of rotating gears-an intricate locking structure that few can interpret-the Troll Market is packed to the rafters with everything an underworlder might need: discarded items from the city above, off-market novelties such as human skin, a barber shop, an opium den, a giant meat grinder and a community message board. It's also, naturally, packed with trolls. More than 200 extras were recruited to inhabit the nooks and crannies of this hazy netherworld. Fortunately for Hellboy, Johann, in gaseous form, can unlock the door.
The writer/director wanted to create a place upon which audiences felt they had just stumbled-a universe with little explanation as to why there was any particular character; rather, the creatures just lived and worked there. Explains concept artist FRANCISCO RUIZ VELASCO, "Every artist working on the production was throwing crazy and exotic ideas around to come up with the different creatures that were to populate the Troll Market, 'where you can find anything in the world, even those things that are not for sale.'" They did just that to flesh out del Toro and Mignola's imaginings.
To interpret this world for film, production designer Scott had three months to transform a 4,000-square-meter cave, most recently used for growing mushrooms, into del Toro's vision of the teeming marketplace. The cave also had to accommodate lights, acting, stunts and effects-such as dripping water and billowing steam-along with hundreds of cast, crew, goblins and trolls. The underground location, a former limestone quarry, was found 25 miles southwest of Budapest in the village of Tarnok, Hungary.
In addition to slick new B.P.R.D. uniforms, costume designer Sammy Sheldon was tasked to make sure no one could ever confuse trolls with humans in the enormous space. "We gave them strange humps on the front, humps on the back, big bellies, big bottoms, gloves with three fingers, tall shoes...anything we could think of to try and change the shape of a human being," she says. "Every single character in the Troll Market has his face covered."
Both the Troll Market and the eerily imposing Golden Army Chamber were designed in sharp contrast with the aboveground world of humans. "The human world is linear, with straight lines and sharp edges," says Scott, "while the shapes of the belowground worlds are curved and fluid, with a mixture of Indian, Moroccan and other North African influences."
The Golden Army Chamber houses a weapon of mass destruction that was commissioned by Elvish King Balor many centuries ago. According to del Toro: "The king said, 'I want an army that doesn't need to eat, sleep, drink or pause.' So, the goblins created a massive army composed of 16' tall mechanical soldiers that are killing machines. But they don't know the difference between a man, woman or child-an innocent victim or a soldier." Once the ruler realizes the horror of his manifested request, he understands that strength is restraint, not brutality, and locks the Golden Army away for eternity, hopefully to never to harm again. Until his son releases its nihilistic power once again.
The robotic holding pen was built in Budapest in a cavernous (and only partially completed) college sports arena, nicknamed Spikey Stadium by the crew due to the Sputnik-like protrusions on its roof. Because the space had sat unused for so long, it had a hollow, lifeless quality that was creepily appropriate for this massive set. In addition, its towering height offered practical advantages for construction and filming pivotal sequences of the army's reactivation.
While Navarro's cameras rolled at these and other locations in greater Budapest, the production's construction crew worked nonstop at Korda Studios' back lot, building the New York street to the production designer's specifications. When principal photography began on June 9, 2007, Manhattan was nothing but a stark metal scaffold, which dozens of men scaled daily to build. As the months passed, it grew to encompass three blocks of shabby shops, a meat packing plant, loading docks, an auto shop, a bank, billboards, an SRO hotel and a trendy meat packing district café.
The New York street hosted several pivotal scenes, including the confrontation between Hellboy and the Elemental, a powerful "Jack and the Beanstalk"-type of vine creature with enough life force to rip through pavement. To fight the latest trick from Nuada's playbook, Hellboy must scramble up a wobbly neon hotel sign to escape its grasping tentacles and bone-crushing moves. Hungarian speed-climbing champion CSABA KOMONDI was brought in for the job, doubling as Hellboy for the stunt. Donning boots, leather pants, heavy coat, oversized shotgun, animatronic tail, harness, pads and the right hand of doom-not to mention the infant he was rescuing-the 160pound man weighed 240 pounds as he scaled the five letters of the sign...in one continuous take.
The nighttime sequence was filmed in November as snow flurries and high winds swept through the set. Although cast and crew shivered in the cold, everyone was confident that the hotel would withstand the conditions. "We used metal tube work behind the façade to prevent it from blowing away," explains Scott.
The B.P.R.D. team also visits Giant's Causeway, an ancient place of myth and legend, touted as the Eighth Wonder of the World. Although aerial photography was taken at the actual site on the Northern Irish coast, the actors performed their Causeway scenes in a hilly field near the town of Soskut in the Hungarian countryside. If they could offer just the right token to the Bethmoora Goblin who keeps watch, Hellboy, Liz and Abe would be admitted passage to the Angel of Death...a complicated proposition.
The freaks live where they work, at B.P.R.D. headquarters. The B.P.R.D. sets for Hellboy II: The Golden Army were also built in and around Budapest. The Bureau's well-stocked "freak corridor," medical bay and meeting rooms were constructed on soundstages at Korda Studios, as was Hellboy's personal lair-complete with dozens of television sets and equally as many cats.
Professor Broom's sumptuous library, the site of a pivotal confrontation between Hellboy and Nuada, occupied another stage at the brand-new Korda facility. Also, the small hut at the military base where Professor Broom raised young Hellboy was built at the studio. Here, as a child, Hellboy first heard tell of the Golden Army's bloody history between mankind and the outlanders.
Finally, Bethmoora, the pivotal setting where Prince Nuada confronts his father about his shortcomings as a ruthless leader, was imagined. The city where King Balor reigns over a peaceful kingdom with favored child, Princess Nuala, was built inside an enormous cavern, and the buildings are carved into the stone walls. The ruinous space has been in shambles for several millennia, and ashes blanket the region.
Inside the Angel's lair is a carving on the floor that depicts a diagram of the universe. The watchful filmgoer will catch Mike Mignola's many icons and zodiac symbols (carved after many detailed sketches were considered by del Toro). Most important is a glyph that depicts Hellboy at the end of the days, alternately the savior of or harbinger to mankind's destruction...depending upon how you read the runes.
The filmmakers took pride in honoring the designs of the many artists who contributed to the production. "It was inspiring to see the intricate sketches come to life over the shoot," commends producer Levin. "These fantasy worlds and creatures had been so carefully imagined by Guillermo and the many artists who worked on Hellboy II. To find the detailed sketches built into intricate sets was especially exciting."
Tooth Fairies and Limb Vendors:
Creatures of Hellboy's World

"I have always loved movies where the star is the monster. That has branded my view of art and storytelling all my life," says del Toro. The director demonstrates this devotion to monsters of all shapes and sizes in Hellboy II: The Golden Army. "In the first movie, we did big, big creatures," he says. "One thing I wanted to explore this time was what would happen if the first attack came from tiny creatures that are actually cute."
Hence, the tooth fairies were born. Dainty and almost Tinkerbell-like, the fairies have little else in common with their spritely namesake; they have an insatiable appetite for calcium and are happiest when eating through human flesh to get to it. "Guillermo outdid himself on the cuteness scale with the tooth fairies, but they're nasty little things," says Selma Blair.
Solution Studios created an animatronic tooth fairy for a scene in the B.P.R.D.'s medical bay in which Johann reanimates the fairy, but the full-scale infestation of the burrowing predators in the auction house fell to Mike Wassel's visual effects team. He would seamlessly create the swarm that attacked the B.P.R.D. after the carnivores had already eaten through a number of auction guests earlier in the evening. Wassel's crew would need to make it appear as if Hellboy, Liz and Abe were frantically gunning and flaming through the nest of fairies.
Wassel's group also created the plantlike Elemental creature, which stands more than 70' tall after water activates its properties. Interestingly, the Elemental "seed" comes from Nuada's grenade; the weapon shoots out magical Elemental spores that, after touching water, sprout into a forest and will choke anything in their way to achieve the goal of reforestation. Originally used by elves to grow an ecosystem, it's been eons since one has been activated.
Solution also designed the juggernaut Golden Army soldiers, which play on-screen as 16'-tall mechanical robots that morph from an egglike state to full militia. This Golden Army has been dormant since Balor put them to rest, but it has been silently waiting for a new wearer of the crown to command them. Del Toro asked his artists for an enormous chamber that could house the hundreds of golden eggs. The stunning designs were brought to life at Solution.
Prosthetic creatures abound in Hellboy II: The Golden Army. With more than two dozen of them on set over the course of the shoot, the Hellboy II creature department was one of the production's largest. Spectral Motion from Los Angeles took charge of 15 characters. Solution Studios, Creature Effects and Euroart Studios from the U.K., DDT from Spain and Filmefex from Hungary also made contributions to the horde of trolls, goblins and creatures of the night.
"This is the most massively scaled film I've ever worked on," says Mike Elizalde, founder of Spectral Motion. "It's been challenging, but also rewarding because of the cleverness and relevance to the story that each character has."
Spectral Motion's many achievements include Wink, the Prince's lumbering sidekick and a match for Hellboy in brute strength. He is portrayed by actor Brian Steele, who is 6'7" tall as Steele, but 7'5" as the drooling beast. The Wink suit, an animatronic masterpiece, weighs 130 pounds. Coupled with Steele's body mass, the suit was stunning that he could maneuver, much less walk, as long as he was able in the suit. Wink's facial expressions and the movements of his weaponlike hand (with built-in mace) were controlled via radio by puppeteers.
"The finish, the quality, the mechanics, the articulation, the personality that these prosthetic characters have been given is incredible. The first time we all saw Wink, we couldn't believe it. The whole set just stopped and assembled around him; it was spellbinding," lauds executive producer Chris Symes.
Stunt coordinator BRAD ALLAN sums the cast and crew's respect for Brian Steele's work: "The effort Brian goes through just to make this character walk is amazing, let alone fight."
Elizalde's painstakingly detailed daily routine included the application of Hellboy's prosthetic makeup. Perlman's entire face was covered, along with much of his neck, arms and torso, in a process that typically required about three hours. "To wear rubber glued to your body and face and then get in front of the camera and, on cue, give the emotion you're supposed to give is tough," says Elizalde. "Ron is a great actor, and his emotion reads through the makeup."
Del Toro agrees. "Sometimes I have to push, or pull back, a performer in prosthetics until he/she finds the right wavelength," he explains. "But with Ron, there's no need. The man is a master in makeup."
As noted, it took makeup artists THOM FLOUTZ and SIMON WEBBER five hours every day to transform Doug Jones into Abe Sapien. The process for his new characters, the massive Angel of Death and the simpering Chamberlain, was also labor-intensive.
Remarks Perlman: "The Angel of Death was, to me, the most impressive of the new makeups and conceits that has been created for the film. She's got eight wings and stands 9-feet tall on an 80-pound frame."
"I always play characters under gobs of makeup and obstacles," Jones muses. "Sometimes they're heavy; sometimes they're hot; sometimes they're glued on...or there's a mask with mechanics, which keeps me from hearing the other characters' dialogue, or there's a vision problem and I can't see where I'm supposed to put my prop. But my job is to look as if I wake up this way every day, and the design work is so beautiful that it becomes something really fun for me to give motion to."
For the character of Johann, Dodd explains the need for multiple performers: "I've got two animators that are on very big radio-controlled units. One animates my mouth, which is basically two little things that pop up and down in time to whatever I'm saying. And the other one controls how much smoke you can see in my glass bubble, as well as-at various key moments-these two eye-like things on the front of my mask that are a form of breathing apparatus. Every time Johann wants to sigh, or there's a climactic moment, smoke will shoot out of that point."
For the many other creatures-from the Tadpole Vendor to Cathedral Head to a bevy of trolls-del Toro commissioned a number of artists to work on their creation, and left it to one of the shops to bring them to life. He is well known to bounce ideas from one artist to another; the results are an amalgam of designs that look as if they have existed since the dawn of time.
Start the Cogs!
Battling a Robotic Army

The showdown in the Golden Army Chamber just past the Angel of Death's lair provides the dramatic climax of Hellboy II: The Golden Army. The lavishly choreographed spectacle involved every department of the production.
The stunts team worked closely with the visual effects department in planning Hellboy's battle with the computer-generated Golden Army soldiers. But the one-on-one fight between Hellboy and the prince is a flesh-and-blood encounter that required close collaboration between stunts and special effects, not to mention close calls between Ron Perlman and Luke Goss.
The dramatic design of the Golden Army Chamber heightened the fight's ferocity. The huge golden cogs that flank the stage where the prince imperiously surveys the army become the fighting arena of the two combatants. The cogs' movement is also the trigger that brings the Golden Army to life.
The action began with a shout of "Start the cogs!" from first assistant director CLIFF LANNING. "Every film has a slightly different range of effects and, in this movie, it's the cogs that make the difference," says assistant SFX supervisor MANEX EFREM, who oversaw their construction and operation. "Because of the cogs, this looks like no other fight you'll ever see. The cogs spin, some move vertically, some are beveled gears. It's very much like a fighting ballet."
The cogs inspired stunt coordinator Brad Allan. "We saw an opportunity for some comedy and some excitement. We're channeling a little bit of Charlie Chaplin from Modern Times and a little Jackie Chan, plus our own Hellboy flavor."
The two combatants have completely different fighting styles, suggests Allan. "Hellboy is a strength guy, a stone-fisted brawler. The prince is all speed and stealth, lean and like lightning."
Although the physically fit Luke Goss performed much of the sword and spear work, Allan upped the ante by mixing in top Chinese martial artists. As is Allan, they're veterans of the Jackie Chan stunt team. Because the prince's fighting technique is based on evasion, del Toro and Allan also decided to add somersaulting to his moves.
"I had no idea how I was going to find a power tumbler with the stature and physique of Luke Goss, because most of them are stocky little guys," says Allan. "But by typing 'tumbler' on YouTube, I found DAMIEN WALTERS-a tall, skinny, blond, blue-eyed guy who is the No. 3 power tumbler in the world today. He's not a professional stunt performer, but his skill was exactly what we needed, and his work was so outstanding that the entire crew broke into applause after most of his takes."
Wielding the ancient spear of Bethmoora, Prince Nuada knows almost no equal. In fact, he almost destroys Hellboy in a previous battle before their rematch in the Chamber. Concept artist Velasco explains of an early version of the drawing, created by PABLO ANGELES: "The main idea was for the spear to be a kind of telescopic device, so when it is short it can be used as a double-bladed sword and then extend to spear," he shares. "All the weapons of the elf royalty are richly decorated. We were trying to stay away from just Celtic motifs and create our own patterns. In the end, we moved the design toward more Oriental and Islamic ornamentation."
Dos Guillermos:
Compadres Shooting

Guillermo del Toro and his director of photography, Guillermo Navarro, are on their fifth collaboration with Hellboy II: The Golden Army. The most recent, Pan's Labyrinth, brought Navarro the Academy Award® for best cinematography in 2007. The pair also made the first Hellboy together. Indeed, the longtime friends planned their camera moves before production began.
"Guillermo Navarro is GDT's right-hand creative partner," observes Doug Jones. "Almost every shot in Hellboy II has a camera movement, and being an actor who relies on movement as much as I do, I love seeing the camera move as well."
Del Toro describes his process with Navarro: "We always work before the movie. It started with Cronos and is the same way now. We watch movies together and discuss possible looks, and when the movie's look is not something similar to any film ever made, we discuss paintings or comic books. If there is no reference, we discuss style sheets and put down some guidelines and talk about what type of film stock to use, what grain we want, what type of light, and then we do tests. We test the wardrobe and makeup and hairstyles and test all the lights we are going to use, and then we seldom talk about these again in the shoot.
It was important to the two filmmakers to shoot a movie unlike anything people had seen before. By taking the magical realm, elf world and new slants to Celtic mythology, they wanted to deliver a universe that was much more exotic and Oriental than audiences would expect. Shots would often get tricky, especially when Jones had two characters in one scene (i.e., a stunt double dressed as Abe Sapien was required to stand outside of the Angel of Death's chamber, where Jones was in full makeup [and 40pound wings] as the Angel herself).
"Guillermo is a friend, and I trust him as an artist and a partner," offers del Toro. "He has taught me much, and we are compadres. He takes risks with me, and we are not afraid to go out on a limb."
****
Shooting wrapped, layers of prosthetics peeled away and his famous sketchbook even more well worn, writer/director del Toro reflects on the draw of the hero with whom he has spent much of the last decade trying to explain: "Hellboy is an unlikely good guy with a blue-collar attitude and a big heart for his family of freaks. I identify with him 100 percent. He has an extraordinary job, but a workman-like mentality. He struggles with inner demons and fights against what others see as his destiny. His is a story of nature vs. nurture, which offers simple but beautiful truths about what it is to be human."
And that is the type of story del Toro best shares. "I would love for people to find within Hellboy movies their favorite monsters," he concludes. "We all need monsters to dream, and that's what we're doing."
Universal Pictures presents, in association with Relativity Media, a Lawrence Gordon/Lloyd Levin production, in association with Dark Horse Entertainment-a Guillermo del Toro film-Hellboy II: The Golden Army, starring Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones, Jeffrey Tambor and John Hurt. The music is by Danny Elfman; the costume designer is Sammy Sheldon. The action-thriller's creature and makeup effects are designed by Mike Elizalde; the film's editor is Bernat Vilaplana. Hellboy II: The Golden Army's production designer is Stephen Scott. The director of photography is Guillermo Navarro, ASC; the co-executive producer is Mike Mignola. The executive producer is Chris Symes. The film is produced by Lawrence Gordon, Mike Richardson, Lloyd Levin. It is based upon the Dark Horse Comic Book created by Mike Mignola. The story is Guillermo del Toro & Mike Mignola. Hellboy II: The Golden Army's screenplay is by Guillermo del Toro, and it is directed by Guillermo del Toro. (C) 2008 Universal Studios. www.hellboymovie.com

ABOUT THE CAST
RON PERLMAN's (Hellboy) creative collaboration with Guillermo del Toro began with the director's first film, Cronos, in 1993. The actor and director reunited nine years later for Blade II. In 2004, del Toro achieved a long-standing goal and cast Perlman as the title character in Hellboy.
The award-winning actor has built an intriguing body of work in film, television and theater over nearly three decades. With a master of fine arts degree from the University of Minnesota, he began his professional stage career in his native New York, delving into the works of contemporaries like Pinter and Beckett as well as the classics of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Ibsen and Chekov. He made two recent trips back to Broadway in A Few Good Men and Bus Stop.
His film career began in 1981 with a lead role in French director Jean-Jacques Annaud's award-winning Quest for Fire. Perlman received a nomination for Canada's Genie Award for his portrayal of the caveman Amoukar. Five years later, Annaud cast him in the role of the hunchback Salvatore in the screen adaptation of Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose."
Perlman's work with French directors continued with a starring role in Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro's award-winning The City of Lost Children, which was nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1995 and for Best Foreign Film at the Independent Spirit Awards, along with a return collaboration with Annaud in Enemy at the Gates, opposite Jude Law and Rachel Weisz. Jeunet also cast him as Johner, opposite Sigourney Weaver and Winona Ryder, in his 1997 Alien: Resurrection.
Other film work includes roles in studio ventures such as The Island of Dr. Moreau; Romeo Is Bleeding; Fluke; The Adventures of Huck Finn; Sleepwalkers; Happy, Texas; and Star Trek: Nemesis. His independent film credits include The Last Supper and the Oscar®-winning short Two Soldiers.
Perlman's three-year run on the critically acclaimed television series Beauty and the Beast brought him a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor, along with two Emmy nominations and three Viewers for Quality Television Awards. Other television work includes HBO's The Second Civil War, Mr. Stitch, The Adventures of Captain Zoom in Outer Space, the Rob Nilsson adaptation of the Rod Serling classic A Town Has Turned to Dust and The Magnificent Seven.
His most recent film and television credits include the Stephen King miniseries Desperation; Larry Fessenden's critically acclaimed indie The Last Winter; the still-tobe-released The Mutant Chronicles, with Thomas Jane and John Malkovich; I Sell the Dead, with Dominic Monaghan; Outlander, with Jim Caviezel and John Hurt; The Dark Country, which will mark Thomas Jane's directorial debut; and Bunraku, with Demi Moore, Josh Hartnett and Woody Harrelson.
One of today's most exciting and versatile actors, SELMA BLAIR (Liz Sherman) first gained our attention for her performance in Cruel Intentions, a youthful retelling of the classic novel "Les Liaisons dangereuses."
After graduating from high school in Michigan, Blair moved to New York City to pursue her goal of being a photographer but found her way to acting classes at The Stella Adler Conservatory and The Column Theatre.
Blair will next star in George Gallo's My Mom's New Boyfriend, opposite Antonio Banderas, Meg Ryan and Colin Hanks, and Lori Petty's The Poker House. On the small screen, Blair will star opposite Molly Shannon in the NBC show Kath and Kim, based on the successful Australian show of the same name. The show is premiering in fall 2008.
Blair starred for two seasons as the title character in the WB's Zoe, Duncan, Jack & Jane and then appeared in the hit comedy Legally Blonde, opposite Reese Witherspoon. She then starred opposite Cameron Diaz and Christina Applegate in The Sweetest Thing and in two independent films that garnered her much critical acclaim: Dana Lustig's Kill Me Later and Todd Solondz's controversial Storytelling.
Blair starred in Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy and appeared in John Waters' A Dirty Shame. Her other recent film credits include Paul Weitz's In Good Company, with Topher Grace; Marcos Siega's Pretty Persuasion; and Newton Thomas Sigel's The Big Empty, with Elias Koteas. She was most recently seen co-starring opposite Greg Kinnear and Morgan Freeman in Robert Benton's Feast of Love, and starring in Ed Burn's Purple Violets and Tom Shankland's Waz, opposite Stellan Skarsgård.
The youngest of four brothers, DOUG JONES (Abe Sapien/Chamberlain/Angel of Death) was born on May 24, 1960, in Indianapolis, Indiana, and grew up in the city's northeast side. After attending Bishop Chatard High School, he headed to Ball State University and graduated in 1982 with a bachelor's degree in telecommunications and a minor in theater.
While at Ball State, Jones joined a troupe called Mime Over Matter. The summer after graduation, he worked as a mime at Kings Island theme park in Cincinnati, Ohio. He has also worked as a contortionist.
After a hitch in theater in Indiana, Jones moved to Los Angeles in 1985. Since then, he has acted in more than 30 films, many television series (including the award-winning Buffy the Vampire Slayer-his episode "Hush" received two Emmy nominations), more than 90 commercials, and music videos with the likes of Madonna, The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Marilyn Manson.
His empathetic performance as Abe Sapien in director Guillermo del Toro 's Hellboy raised his profile with both audiences and critics in 2004. A year later, del Toro gave him the title role in his career-defining fantasy/horror film, El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth). In addition to portraying Pan, Jones took on the role of The Pale Man, a gruesome creature with a penchant for eating children. Working under heavy prosthetics for both characters, he chose to learn and speak their dialogue in archaic Spanish. Pan's Labyrinth was nominated for six Oscars® and won three, including Best Makeup.
2005 proved to be a busy year for Jones. In addition to starring in Pan's Labyrinth, he performed in Doom, The Benchwarmers and M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water. In 2006, he donned the suit of the Silver Surfer and created another iconic screen character in the 2007 box-office blockbuster 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer.
Although best-known for his work under prosthetics, such as the floppy zombie Billy in the Halloween classic Hocus Pocus, or the lead Spy Morlock in the 2002 remake of The Time Machine, Jones has performed as himself in such films as Adaptation, with Nicolas Cage; Mystery Men, with Ben Stiller; Batman Returns, with Danny DeVito; and indie projects including Stefan Haves' Stalled and Phil Donlon's A Series of Small Things. He portrayed Cesare in David Lee Fisher's 2005 remake of the 1919 silent classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which won three prizes at the Screamfest Horror Film Festival, including the Audience Choice Award.
Jones was also prosthetics-free for his guest-starring role as a drug addict in the "Blood Hungry" episode of the television series Criminal Minds.
Coming up for Jones are roles in the feature film Legion, and again, out of the prosthetics in the indie features Super Capers and My Name Is Jerry.
With memorable characters to his credit, including toadying sidekick Hank Kingsley on The Larry Sanders Show and patriarch George Bluth Sr. on Arrested Development, JEFFREY TAMBOR (Tom Manning) has made his mark on pop culture and earned six Emmy Award nominations along the way.
Born and raised in San Francisco, Tambor began his study of acting at age 12. He earned a bachelor of arts degree at San Francisco State University and completed his master's degree in theater arts at Wayne State University.
He made his film debut as Al Pacino's deranged law partner in Norman Jewison's ...And Justice for All in 1979. Since then, his credits have included provocative dramas such as Pollack, Ed Harris' opus to artist Jackson Pollock, as well as the eye-popping comedy Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas, in which Ron Howard cast Tambor as the Mayor of Whoville.
Tambor costarred opposite Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie in Girl, Interrupted and has also been featured in Meet Joe Black, Dr. Dolittle, There's Something About
Mary, City Slickers, Mr. Mom, Pastime, Crossing the Bridge, Article 99, Mel Brooks' Life Stinks, Three O'Clock High, Saturday the 14th, Lisa, No Small Affair, Face Dancer, Under Pressure, A House in the Hills, George Lucas' Radioland Murders, Heavy Weights, Big Bully, Never Again, Get Well Soon and Learning Curves. Tambor voiced King Neptune in the The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie.
Tambor received two Emmy nominations for Best Supporting Actor in a
Comedy for his portrayal of George Bluth Sr. in the Emmy Award-winning series
Arrested Development. The critically acclaimed show was nominated for two Golden
Globes for Best Comedy, and Tambor won a Golden Satellite Award for Best
Supporting Actor.
During his six years on HBO's award-winning The Larry Sanders Show, he was nominated four times for Emmy Awards, and four times for CableACE Awards. He also received an American Comedy Award nomination.
Tambor starred opposite veteran actor John Lithgow in the sitcom Twenty Good Years. His many television credits include regular and recurring stints on such series as Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, American Dreamer, Studio 5-B and Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into the Future. He starred in his own series, Mr. Sunshine, and guest-starred in the "Dead Right" episode of HBO's horror anthology series Tales from the Crypt.
Tambor has returned to the legitimate stage throughout his career. Most recently, he appeared as Max Detweiler in the Hollywood Bowl's production of The Sound of Music. On Broadway, he starred opposite Alan Alda and Liev Schreiber in the Tony Award-winning revival of Glengarry Glen Ross, and in Sly Fox, directed by Arthur Penn. His credits also include the New York Shakespeare Festival's production of Measure for Measure and Los Angeles productions of Sly Fox, The Hands of Its Enemy, A Flea in Her Ear, American Mosaic and The Seagull.
He directed Lanford Wilson's Burn This at the Skylight Theatre in Los Angeles and has acted and directed at such prestigious regional companies as the Seattle Repertory Theatre, the Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, the Academy Festival Theatre in Chicago, the San Diego Shakespeare Festival, the South Coast Repertory Theatre and the Loeb Drama Center at Harvard University.
When he isn't acting, Tambor teaches class at the Santa Monica Playhouse.
Tambor lives in Los Angeles with his wife Kasia, his son Gabriel and his daughter Eve.
Actor LUKE GOSS (Prince Nuada) was part of the multiplatinum-selling British band, Bros. By age 20, Goss had won the Brit Award, performed at Wembley Stadium and sold out arenas across Europe, Japan, Australia and Canada. His best-selling autobiography on the experience, "I Owe You Nothing," was published by Harper Collins in 1993.
Goss started a new career, and found a new audience, playing Danny Zuko in the smash hit musical Grease on London's West End. He later toured with the production throughout the United Kingdom.
Goss established himself as an actor on screen in 2002 with performances in two very different features: David S. Goyer's independent drama ZigZag, with John Leguizamo, Oliver Platt, Natasha Lyonne and Wesley Snipes; and Guillermo del Toro's hit Blade II, with Snipes and Ron Perlman. The following year, he starred in the title role of the well-reviewed British gangster film Charlie, and in the title role in the Emmy Award-winning Hallmark miniseries Frankenstein, with Donald Sutherland and William Hurt.
In 2005, Goss traveled to India for the title role in the Biblical epic One Night with the King, opposite Omar Sharif and Peter O'Toole. Recent credits also include The Man, with Samuel L. Jackson and Eugene Levy; Mercenary for Justice, with Steven Seagal; Bone Dry, with Lance Henriksen; Unearthed, with Emmanuelle Vaugier; Deep Winter, with Michael Madsen; and Shanghai Baby, with Bai Ling. Goss recently completed filming Tekken, a sci-fi thriller based on the popular video and arcade game.
Goss lives in Los Angeles.
ANNA WALTON (Princess Nuala) graduated from the Oxford School of Drama in 2004. Soon after, she starred in the film Vampire Diary, a cult hit set in London's trendy neo-Goth scene, for which she won the Best Actress award at the 2008 Milan International Film Festival. Walton next filmed Simon Hunter's The Mutant Chronicles, opposite Ron Perlman, John Malkovich, Devon Aoki and Thomas Jane. She has
appeared in BBC productions including Caravaggio, The Forgotten Pilot, The Fast Show and Bright Hair. At Oxford, she had leading roles on stage in A Collier's Friday Night, The Country Wife, The Cherry Orchard and Picnic.
This summer, Walton will begin filming the female lead role of Susannah in NBC's major new series, Robinson Crusoe, which airs in September 2008.
Walton lives in London with her husband and son.
Easily one of the youngest people ever to create a television series, SETH MACFARLANE (Johann Krauss -- Voice) began his career studying animation and design at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he created the animated short film The Life of Larry. Impressed executives at Hanna-Barbera encouraged MacFarlane to move to Los Angeles in 1995 to create and direct a short film for them. After moving to Los Angeles, he went on to work on numerous animated series, including Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Jungle Cubs and Johnny Bravo.
MacFarlane's big break came when the producers of MADtv discovered The Life of Larry and approached him to air it as four short segments. Although that deal fell apart, executives at FOX recognized his talent and gave him a shot to create a primetimeanimated series of his own. Over the next six months, MacFarlane created, animated, wrote, directed and provided all the main male characters' voices for what became Family Guy. Utilizing all his contacts, friends and resources to produce the seven-minute short, he delivered it in May 1998 and, just weeks later, it was picked up. MacFarlane went on to receive an Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance for his role as Stewie Griffin, and Family Guy has garnered two nominations for Outstanding Animated Series. In 2002, he also received an Emmy for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics for Family Guy.
MacFarlane also serves as co-creator/executive producer/voice actor on the FOX-animated series American Dad!, and he is executive producing the FOX live-action series The Winner. His additional television credits include serving as consulting producer on The Pitts and a guest-starring role on Gilmore Girls.
Born and raised in Connecticut, MacFarlane lives in Los Angeles.
Born in 1940 to Arnold Herbert (an Anglican vicar) and Phyllis Maseey (an engineer and amateur actor), JOHN HURT (Trevor "Broom" Buttenholm) attended schools in Kent and Lincoln. He was a stagehand with the Lincoln Repertory and studied art at St. Martin's School, London, before winning a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
Hurt has become one of Britain's best-known, most critically acclaimed and most versatile actors. He made his West End debut in 1962 and went on to take the Critics' Award for Most Promising Actor in Harold Pinter's The Dwarfs. For the stage, he has also appeared in Pinter's The Caretaker; Seán O'Casey's The Shadow of a Gunman; Tom Stoppard's Travesties; and Ivan Turgenev's A Month in the Country. The year 2000 saw his greatly acclaimed performance in Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape on London's West End.
Hurt's impressive body of television work commenced in 1961 and has included such notable roles as Caligula in I, Claudius, Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment and, most memorably, Quentin Crisp in the autobiographical The Naked Civil Servant, for which he received a Best Actor Emmy Award and a BAFTA Best Television Actor Award, and which led Crisp to opine that "John Hurt is my representative here on Earth."
It was his defining film roles as Max in Midnight Express (1978) and John Merrick in The Elephant Man (1980) that thrust him into the international spotlight with Oscar® nominations for Best Supporting Actor and Best Actor, respectively. His other film work includes a trio of roles in 1984 which rewarded him with the Evening Standard Award for Best Actor for that year for: The Hit and Champions. His many films include A Man for All Seasons, The Field, Scandal, Rob Roy and John Boorman's Two Nudes Bathing, the latter for which he received a CableAce Award in 1995, and an acclaimed performance in Richard Kwietniowski's Love and Death on Long Island. Hurt was seen as Dr. Iannis in Captain Corelli's Mandolin, directed by John Madden.
Hurt filmed Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape, directed by Atom Egoyan in 1999, and Tabloid, directed by David Blair in 2000. In 2001, Hurt filmed Miranda, directed by Marc Munden, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, directed by Chris Columbus and Owning Mahowny, directed by Richard Kwietniowski.
In 2002, Hurt won the Variety Club Award for Outstanding Performance in a Stage Play, alongside Penelope Wilton for their performance in Brian Friel's Afterplay. This was followed by the film Hellboy, directed by Guillermo del Toro, and The Alan Clark Diaries for the BBC.
In 2004, Hurt shot The Skeleton Key, directed by Iain Softley, Shooting Dogs, directed by Michael Caton-Jones for BBC Films, and The Proposition, directed by John Hillcoat. He was also awarded a C.B.E.
In 2005, Hurt filmed V for Vendetta for Warner Bros.; appeared in Heroes, by Gerald Sibleyras, adapted by Tom Stoppard, at Wyndham's Theatre, which was directed by Thea Sharrock; and won the 2006 Olivier Award for Best New Comedy. That year, he filmed Boxes, written and directed by Jane Birkin, and Outlander.
In 2007, Hurt filmed The Oxford Murders, directed by Álex de la Iglesia; Lesson 21 directed by Alessandro Baricco; Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, for Steven Spielberg (to be released May 2008); and Recount, directed by Jay Roach, in which he played former Secretary of State Warren Christopher.
Hurt has recently completed a new project with Jim Jarmusch, and is currently in preparation for 44 Inch Chest, written by Louis Mellis and David Scinto (Sexy Best) and to be directed by Malcolm Venville.

ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS:
Since winning the Critic's Prize at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival and nine Mexican Academy Awards for his first feature, the Mexican-American co-production Cronos, GUILLERMO DEL TORO (Directed by/Screenplay by/Story by) has established himself among the most admired and sought-after international writer-directors. With the release of his Spanish-language film Pan's Labyrinth, which drew an unprecedented 25-minute standing ovation at its 2006 Cannes Film Festival premiere, del Toro sealed his position as both a critical and commercial success.
Picturehouse released Pan's Labyrinth domestically in December of 2006. The film received six Academy Award® nominations (including Best Foreign Language Film and Best Original Screenplay for del Toro) and won three Oscars®. It was also the recipient of nine Ariel Awards (including Best Director for del Toro, out of twelve nominations), three BAFTA Awards (including Best Foreign Language Film, out of eight nominations), and seven Goya Awards (including Best Original Screenplay for del Toro, out of 13 nominations). In addition, Pan's Labyrinth received awards from the Boston, Los Angeles and New York film critics, and was selected by the National Society of Film Critics as the best film of the year. It was also nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. It is currently the highest-grossing Spanish language film of all time in the U.S. and the fifth highest-grossing foreign language film in U.S. box-office history, with $37.6 million in box-office receipts.
del Toro has built his career by moving back and forth between independent, Spanish-language films and increasingly big-budget studio productions. A devotee of the gothic horror genre, del Toro followed Cronos with the environmental horror film Mimic, which he directed and co-wrote for Dimension Films. Mira Sorvino, Jeremy Northam, Josh Brolin and Charles S. Dutton star in the film. He then returned to Spanish-language subject matter with the supernatural, Spanish Civil War film, The Devil's Backbone. Released in the U.S. by Sony Classics, the film appeared on the "Best of 2001" lists of such publications as The New York Times and Newsweek. In 2004, after completing the New Line vampire film Blade II, starring Wesley Snipes and Kris Kristofferson, del Toro began work on Hellboy for Revolution Studios. Based on the Dark Horse graphic novels by Mike Mignola, the film set the stage for his current production, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, for Universal Pictures.
His successful collaboration with Universal on Hellboy II: The Golden Army has led del Toro to join forces with the studio for two new ventures. He has entered into a first-look producing deal through which he will write and develop material both for himself as a director and for other filmmakers. In addition, he and fellow Mexican filmmakers Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González-Iñárritu have created Cha Cha Cha, a production entity that will produce five films for Universal Studios and Focus Features. The three filmmakers, who between them have 17 Oscar® nominations and over a billion dollars in box-office receipts worldwide, will each direct one film for the banner, and will oversee the production of two films by other filmmakers. The first film to come out of this partnership is Rudi y Cursi, directed by Carlos Cuarón and starring Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna.
In 2007, del Toro produced the Spanish supernatural film The Orphanage, which has become the highest-grossing local-language film in Spain's history. Picturehouse released the film in the U.S. in December 2007. del Toro will produce the American remake of the film later this year. He will also produce the gothic horror film Don't Be Afraid of the Dark for Miramax. del Toro serves as executive producer on Gaumont's upcoming Splice, directed by Vincenzo Natali and starring Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley. del Toro 's other development projects include The Witches, based on the classic Roald Dahl novel, for Warner Bros., which he is producing with Alfonso Cuarón, and The Left Hand of Darkness, with Francis Coppola's American Zoetrope.
del Toro 's interests also extend to the worlds of television, gaming and graphic novels. Along with "Hellboy" creator Mike Mignola, del Toro supervised the production of a videogame based on the "Hellboy" franchise, which was released as a Playstation 3 game. For Dark Horse, he is creating two original graphic novels and a series of action figures.
In the field of animation, del Toro served as creative consultant on the animated films Hellboy: Sword of Storms, Hellboy: Blood and Iron and Hellboy: The Phantom Claw, produced by Revolution Studios and Konami. In addition, he is a partner in the international animation company Magic Box, which will develop and produce animated films that bring together European, Japanese and American creative talent.
Born in 1964 in Guadalajara, Mexico, del Toro attended the University of Guadalajara. He trained with Oscar®-winning makeup and special-effects artist Dick Smith and later established his own special effects and makeup company, Necropolis, S.A., in Guadalajara. Early in his career, he produced and directed extensively for television in Mexico. He created and directed numerous episodes of the Mexican television series Hora Marcada for Televisa. In 1985, at the age of 21, he produced the feature film Dona Herlinda and Her Son for director Jaime Humberto Hermosillo.
del Toro has served on many film festival juries. He was a member of the Independent Film Project's Spirit Awards jury in 1999 and 2000. He was a judge and mentor for the 2000 NHK Awards and presented those awards at the Sundance Film Festival that year. In addition, del Toro has served as a mentor for many young filmmakers and has been a force behind both the Guadalajara Film Festival and the Sundance Institute's filmmaker lab held annually in Guadalajara, Mexico.
del Toro is the author of a critical study of the films of Alfred Hitchcock, published by the University of Guadalajara Press. Miracle Press has published his screenplay for Cronos in Mexico. His Hellboy screenplay, along with some of his conceptual artwork for the film, has recently been published by Dark Horse Publications.
MIKE MIGNOLA (Story by/Based Upon the Dark Horse Comic by/Co-Executive Producer) was born on September 16, 1960, in Berkeley, California and grew up in nearby Oakland, the eldest son of a tough and leathery cabinetmaker. His fascination with ghosts and monsters began at an early age (he doesn't remember why) and reading "Dracula" at age 12 introduced him to Victorian literature and folklore from which he has never recovered.
After graduating from the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1982 (hoping to find a way to draw monsters for a living), Mignola moved to New York City to begin a career in the comic book field. Starting as a bad inker for Marvel Comics, he swiftly evolved into a not-so-bad artist on comics like "Rocket Raccoon," "Alpha Flight" and "The Hulk." By the late 1980s, however, he began to develop his own unique graphic style and moved onto higher-profile commercial projects like "Cosmic Odyssey" (1988) and "Gotham by Gaslight" (1989) for DC Comics, and the not-so-commercial "Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser" (1990) for Marvel. In 1992 he drew the comic-book adaptation of the film Bram Stoker's Dracula for Topps Comics, which led to his working (briefly) with Francis Ford Coppola on the film.
In 1993, Mignola joined several other comic book creators (John Byrne, Frank Miller, Geof Darrow, etc.) to form the Legend imprint at Dark Horse Comics, and there he created Hellboy, a tough and leathery occult detective who may or may not be the beast of the apocalypse. The first "Hellboy" story line ("Seed of Destruction," 1994) was co-written by John Byrne, but Mignola has continued writing the book himself and, as of this writing, there are six "Hellboy" graphic novels (with more on the way), several spin-off titles ("Hellboy: Weird Tales," "Hellboy Junior," "B.P.R.D."), two anthologies of prose stories, several novels, two animated films and the live action films starring Ron Perlman. "Hellboy" has earned numerous comic industry awards and is published in many countries.
Mignola has also worked as a production designer for the Disney film Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) and was the visual consultant to director Guillermo del Toro on Blade II (2002) and Hellboy (2004).
In 2001, Mignola created the award-winning comic book, "The Amazing Screw-On Head" (recently adapted into animation). In 2006, he co-wrote with Christopher Golden the novel "Baltimore: or the Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire," published by Bantam Books in 2007.
Mignola lives somewhere in Southern California with his wife, daughter and cat.
Spanning four decades, LAWRENCE GORDON (Produced by) has maintained a career as one of the entertainment industry's most prolific and successful producers. He has been behind such timeless films as Field of Dreams, which was nominated for three Academy Awards® including Best Picture; the landmark action film Die Hard; and the ultimate "buddy picture" 48 Hrs., starring Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte. He brought Hellboy to the screen in 2004.
Born in Yazoo City, Mississippi, Gordon graduated from Tulane University with a degree in business administration. Upon moving to Los Angeles in the early '60s, he went to work as executive assistant to Aaron Spelling at Four Star Television and soon became a writer and associate producer of many Spelling shows. He followed with a stint as head of West Coast talent development for ABC Television and later as an executive with Bob Banner Associates. In 1968, he joined Sam Arkoff and Jim Nicholson at American International Pictures (AIP) as story editor and rose to vice president in charge of development. He then segued to Screen Gems, the television division of Columbia Pictures, as vice president, where he helped put together the classic television movie Brian's Song, as well as the first "novel for television," the adaptation of Leon Uris' "QB VII."
Accepting an offer to become the first executive in the company's history to head worldwide production, Gordon returned to AIP. His many projects included Coffy; Foxy Brown; Hell's Angels '69; Wild in the Streets; John Milius' Dillinger, (which Gordon also executive-produced); and Ralph Bakshi's groundbreaking and controversial animated hit Heavy Traffic (one of The New York Times' top-10 films of 1973).
Gordon then formed Lawrence Gordon Productions, and began a long and successful association with director Walter Hill. Among the duo's memorable titles are Hard Times, starring Charles Bronson; The Driver, with Ryan O'Neal and Isabelle Adjani; the cult classic The Warriors; 48 Hrs., starring Nick Nolte and a then-unknown Eddie Murphy; the rock-and-roll fable Streets of Fire; Brewster's Millions, with Richard Pryor and John Candy; and Another 48 Hrs., which reunited the comedic team from the original. Gordon also produced the comedy hit The End, starring Burt Reynolds, and collaborated with him again on the box-office smash, Hooper. Also during this period, Gordon produced the Paul Schrader-penned Rolling Thunder, starring William Devane and Tommy Lee Jones; and the now-cult movie musical Xanadu, starring Olivia Newton-John and Gene Kelly. In 1982, he reunited with his old boss Aaron Spelling to create and executive produce the long-running ABC television series Matt Houston.
In 1984, Gordon became president and chief operating officer of 20th Century Fox, where he oversaw such successful titles as James Cameron's Aliens; James L. Brooks' Broadcast News; Commando, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger; and Jewel of the Nile, starring Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito. During his tenure, The Simpsons television series was created by Matt Groening and James L. Brooks, as were series by Stephen Bochco and David E. Kelley.
After his stint at Fox, Gordon produced the critically acclaimed Lucas, marking the directorial debut of David Seltzer; and Jumpin' Jack Flash, starring Whoopi Goldberg, which was Penny Marshall's first film as a director.
Gordon has also produced for the stage. For Broadway, he produced the musical Smile, with music by Tony, Grammy and Academy Award® winner Marvin Hamlisch and book and lyrics by Tony and Academy Award® winner Howard Ashman. Off-Broadway, Gordon was awarded the prestigious Drama Desk Award for his revival of Joe Orton's Entertaining Mr. Sloane.
In 1987, Gordon produced the summer smash Predator, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, and later, its sequel. Then, in 1988, he produced the summer blockbuster Die Hard, which introduced Bruce Willis as an action hero and spawned two hit sequels as one of cinema's all-time most successful and imitated franchises.
In 1989, Gordon produced Field of Dreams, the much loved film starring Kevin Costner and directed by Phil Alden Robinson. The Universal release received three Academy Award® nominations, including one for Best Picture, while the title itself, "field of dreams," has become part of the American vernacular.
Subsequently, Gordon produced Family Business, directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Sean Connery, Dustin Hoffman and Matthew Broderick; the comedy hit K-9, starring James Belushi; The Rocketeer, directed by Joe Johnston, for The Walt Disney Company; and Lock Up, starring Sylvester Stallone.
In 1989, Gordon formed Largo Entertainment with the backing of JVC Entertainment, Inc. of Japan, representing the first major Japanese investment in the entertainment industry. As the company's chairman and chief executive officer, Gordon was responsible for the production of such films as Point Break, starring Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves; Unlawful Entry, starring Kurt Russell, Ray Liotta and Madeleine Stowe; Used People, starring Shirley MacLaine, Jessica Tandy, Kathy Bates, Marcia Gay Harden and Marcello Mastroianni; and Timecop, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. Largo also cofinanced and handled the foreign distribution of the acclaimed Malcolm X, directed by Spike Lee and starring Denzel Washington.
In 1994, Gordon left Largo in favor of a long-term producing deal with Universal Pictures. At Universal, his first production was the controversial Kevin Costner-starrer Waterworld, which has grossed $300 million worldwide. Among other Lawrence Gordon Productions are The Devil's Own, starring Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt; the critically acclaimed Boogie Nights, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and starring Mark Wahlberg, Burt Reynolds, Heather Graham and Julianne Moore; and Mystery Men, starring Ben Stiller.
In 2001, Gordon produced two pictures that opened number one at the box office: the summer hit Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, starring Oscar® winner Angelina Jolie, and the acclaimed K-PAX, starring two-time Oscar® winner Kevin Spacey and four-time Oscar® nominee Jeff Bridges. In summer 2003, Gordon's Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life was released, with Angelina Jolie back as Lara Croft.
Gordon produced Hellboy, directed by Guillermo del Toro, in 2004.
Gordon is still going strong. In September, director Zack Snyder (300) began shooting the highly anticipated Watchmen, based upon Alan Moore's graphic novel (dubbed one of the "100 Best Novels" by Time magazine). Watchmen is slated for release in March 2009.
Gordon is a member of the Board of Directors of the Producers Guild of America. He served as a member of the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, as well as the Board of the American Film Institute. He is a recipient of the ShoWest Lifetime Achievement Award and the Producers Guild of America's prestigious David O. Selznick Lifetime Achievement Award.
MIKE RICHARDSON (Produced by) is the president and founder of Dark Horse Comics, the award-winning international publishing house he founded in 1986. He is also the president of Dark Horse Entertainment, for which he has produced numerous projects for film and television.
In addition to producing films such as My Name Is Bruce, Hellboy and Mystery Men, he has also produced films based on several of his own creations, including The Mask and Timecop. Richardson owns a successful pop culture retail chain, Things From Another World, stretching from Universal CityWalk in Los Angeles to his hometown in Milwaukie, Oregon.
Recent ventures include his new book-publishing imprint, M Press, a toy division, Dark Horse Deluxe and an award-winning Web site. Richardson has written numerous graphic novels and comics series, as well as "Comics Between the Panels" and "Blast Off!," two critically acclaimed books about pop culture. He lives with his wife Karie and their three daughters in Lake Oswego, Oregon.
Hellboy II: The Golden Army is the follow up to 2004's Hellboy, based on Mike Mignola's award-winning comic book-series, which was also directed by Academy Award®-nominated Guillermo del Toro, and starred Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones and Jeffrey Tambor. The film went on to gross $100 million worldwide and found even greater success on DVD.
LLOYD LEVIN (Produced by) produced Hellboy II: The Golden Army with Lawrence Gordon continuing an ongoing working relationship that began in the mid-80s. They are currently producing Watchmen, based on Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons seminal graphic novel, directed by Zack Snyder and starring Malin Akerman, Billy Crudup, Matthew Goode, Jackie Earle Hayley, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Patrick Wilson. Published by DC Comics between 1986 and 1987, Watchmen is the only graphic novel to win the Hugo Award and be named among Time magazine's "100 Best Novels From 1923 to the Present."
Levin most recently produced United 93 with Working Title Films for Universal Pictures. Directed by Paul Greengrass, United 93 was nominated for two Academy Awards®, including Best Director, and was named best picture of the year by the New York Film Critics Circle. It was nominated for six BAFTA awards, including Best British Film, and won BAFTAs for Best Director and Best Editing.
Levin's collaboration with Greengrass continues with the director's new film, the untitled Green Zone thriller. The Iraq War thriller is based on journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran's critically acclaimed book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, and stars Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Amy Ryan, Jason Isaacs and Brendan Gleeson.
Levin received his first credit as associate producer on Die Hard, which was based upon Roderick Thorp's 1979 novel "Nothing Lasts Forever." Levin brought the book to Lawrence Gordon's attention and subsequently oversaw the film's development. He then served as associate producer on the Academy Award®-nominated Field of Dreams (1989), directed by Phil Alden Robinson and starring Kevin Costner, and K-9 (1989), starring James Belushi. In 1990, Levin was executive producer on both Die Hard
2: Die Harder and Predator 2. In 1991, he produced The Rocketeer, directed by Joe Johnston and starring Bill Campbell and Jennifer Connelly.
At Largo Entertainment, Levin served as president of production and oversaw the production of such hit movies as Point Break, directed by Kathryn Bigelow and starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze; Unlawful Entry, starring Kurt Russell and Ray Liotta; and Timecop, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. He also executive-produced Used People, starring Shirley MacLaine, Kathy Bates and Marcello Mastroianni.
After departing Largo, Levin continued his partnership with Gordon as a producer. In 1997, he executive-produced The Devil's Own, starring Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt. He also produced Event Horizon that year, which starred Laurence Fishburne and Sam Neill. In 1998, he produced Paul Thomas Anderson's breakthrough movie, Boogie Nights. Nominated for three Academy Awards®, Boogie Nights starred Mark Wahlberg, Julianne Moore, William H. Macy, Philip Seymour Hoffman, John C. Reilly, Heather Graham and Burt Reynolds. Levin produced Mystery Men in 1999, which starred Ben Stiller, William H. Macy and Geoffrey Rush, and followed it with Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, starring Angelina Jolie. The movie, based on the video game, went on to a worldwide box-office gross of over $280 million and became the most successful action movie of all time starring a female lead. He also produced K-PAX, directed by Iain Softley and starring Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges, and in 2001, produced Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life.
CHRIS SYMES (Executive Producer) previously filmed in Hungary as executive producer of the fantasy-adventure Eragon in 2006. His feature-film credits also include AVP: Alien vs. Predator, Resident Evil and The Match. He produced a feature-length television pilot, The Sight.
Symes completed studies at Bath Academy of Art with first class honors in 1985 before pursuing his career in film and television production. During several years of freelance work, he began producing music videos, and in 1991, joined Hollywood-based Propaganda Films Europe (Sleepers, The Portrait of a Lady, Wild at Heart). He became head of European production in 1994, and a year later was named managing director of Propaganda Films Europe. In that position, he was responsible for the entire European division budget, all aspects of production, and the development of new projects and creative talent.
Symes lives in London.
Academy Award®-winning cinematographer GUILLERMO NAVARRO (Director of Photography) was born and raised in Mexico City. He has a long-time collaboration with Guillermo del Toro, and shot Cronos, The Devil's Backbone, Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth for the director. His work on El Laberinto del Fauno, as it is known in Spanish, brought him an Oscar®, as well Film Independent's Spirit Award, Mexico's Ariel Award and a New York Film Critics Circle award, among others.
At the start of his career, Navarro moved to Europe to work as an apprentice and assistant to director of photography Ricardo Aronovich, AFC, in France. Upon his return to Mexico, Navarro shot the critically acclaimed film Cabeza de Vaca for director Nicolás Echeverría, earning a Best Cinematography Award from the Mexican Academy. The movie was also Mexico's entry for Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards®.
Navarro has since moved to Los Angeles and has frequently collaborated with directors Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino on such films as Desperado, Four Rooms, From Dusk Till Dawn and Jackie Brown. Navarro has filmed the large action and effects movies The Long Kiss Goodnight, Zathura: A Space Adventure, Spawn and Stuart Little. His work was most recently seen in director Shawn Levy's Night at the Museum, which starred Robin Williams and Ben Stiller.
STEPHEN SCOTT (Production Designer) commenced his career in the BBC Television Design Department, and then migrated in to the freelance film industry a decade later. He is a "studio trained" professional, having worked his way up through the "ranks", gaining experience and knowledge along the way-and known within the industry for his innovative approach to design in all scales and subject matter, with a fine and considerate attention to detail.
Scott's credits as production designer include Guillermo del Toro's first Hellboy. Scott also designed Doom, Highlander: Endgame and episodes of the original British television series Doctor Who. Further credits as art director include Die Another Day, Tomorrow Never Dies, First Knight, Afraid of the Dark, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Madame Sousatzka and Inspector Morse. He worked as assistant art director on
Interview With the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
Scott lives in London, but enjoys working in all corners of the world-wherever the job takes him. His work and his inspiring, untiring creative energy are widely admired by others, and his generosity of spirit and leadership treasured by so many.
BERNAT VILAPLANA (Editor) first collaborated with Guillermo del Toro on Pan's Labyrinth, which was filmed in Spain where it is known as El Laberinto del Fauno. His work on the film was honored with two awards for best editing, the Goya and the Cinema Writers Circle Award, both in Spain. He was also nominated for Mexico's Ariel Award. Vilaplana's film credits also include the award-winning La Zona, Lo Mejor de mi, La Monja, Morir en San Hilario, Business, Yo Puta, Beyond Re-Animator, La Simetria, Maresme and La Escapada. For Spanish television, he edited Rumors.
Vilaplana lives in Barcelona.
MIKE ELIZALDE (Creature and Makeup Effects Designed by) was born in Mazatlan Sinaloa, Mexico in 1960 and emigrated to the United States with his parents when he was five years old. He became interested in monsters and creature effects as a young child watching films like Frankenstein and Creature From the Black Lagoon. Rick Baker's work in An American Werewolf in London inspired him to become involved in the film industry as an artist and technician.
With the invaluable information outlined in Lee Baygan's book "Techniques of Three Dimensional Makeup," Elizalde put together a portfolio of original makeup designs and sent samples of his work to several makeup-effects studios while serving in the military. He entered the film industry in 1987 upon being honorably discharged from the armed forces and quickly established his career as a sculptor, makeup artist and designer, and one of the top animatronic engineers in his field.
Elizalde has worked on more than 60 feature films, including Men in Black, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Hellboy and X-Men: The Last Stand. He and his wife Mary established Spectral Motion Incorporated in 1994 as a vehicle for producing and marketing a series of original model kits sculpted by Elizalde. The overwhelming success of this endeavor further fueled his desire to open his own creature and makeup-effects studio. Spectral Motion participated in the creation of creature and makeup effects in successful collaboration with such top-level effects companies as Rick Baker's Cinovation and Stan Winston Studio in the years that followed. The opportunity to become independent came when director Guillermo del Toro offered him the contract to create the effects for Hellboy, del Toro's fourth wide-release feature film.
Today, Spectral Motion is recognized as one of the leading creature-effects and makeup studios in the industry and has twice received recognition for consideration from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as well as receiving a Best Makeup Saturn Award from The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films in 2004 for Hellboy.
As head of Spectral Motion, Elizalde translates the design requirements set forth by the directors and producers of the projects he supervises. The end result is an array of signature character designs, which are showcased in the growing list of feature films in the Spectral Motion resume. He is a member of the Screen Actors Guild and the Makeup and Hairstylists Guild, Local 706.
A graduate of the Wimbledon College of Art, SAMMY SHELDON (Costume Designer) began her career as an assistant designer on films including Ridley Scott's Gladiator and Jake Scott's Plunkett & Macleane. She went on to design costumes for Scott's Black Hawk Down and the mockumentary, The Calcium Kid, starring Orlando Bloom. She received her second BAFTA nomination for Best Costume Design for The Merchant of Venice, starring Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons. Sheldon was previously nominated for her work on the BBC's modern adaptation of The Canterbury Tales.
Sheldon has also designed the cross-dressing comedy Kinky Boots, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, V for Vendetta and Matthew Vaughn's Stardust, starring Claire Danes, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sienna Miller and Robert De Niro. After wrapping Hellboy II: The Golden Army, she designed the untitled Green Zone thriller, starring Matt Damon, for director Paul Greengrass. Sheldon was born in Manchester and lives in London.
DANNY ELFMAN (Music by) was born in 1953, in Los Angeles, California, where he currently resides. Over the last 20 years, he has established himself as one of Hollywood's leading film composers. Elfman has written close to 50 film scores featuring his unique sound, including Batman, Spider-Man, Men in Black, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Pee-wee's Big Adventure. In addition to these signature soundtracks, he has scored such diverse films as Big Fish, Good Will Hunting, Dolores Claiborne, Midnight Run, To Die For, Dead Presidents, Sommersby and Chicago. For television, Elfman created the infectious themes to The Simpsons and Desperate Housewives. His honors include a Grammy, an Emmy and three Academy Award® nominations.
Elfman's first experience in performing and composition was for a French theatrical troupe, Le Grand Magic Circus, at the age of 18. The following year, he collaborated with his brother Richard performing musical theater on the streets of California. Elfman then worked with a "surrealistic musical cabaret" for six years, using this outlet to explore multifarious musical genres. For 17 years he wrote and performed with rock band Oingo Boingo, producing such hits as "Weird Science" and "Dead Man's Party."
In 2005, Elfman worked with longtime collaborator Tim Burton on the films Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the stop-motion animated musical Corpse Bride. Other projects in 2006 and 2007 include the scores for the CGI-animated feature Meet the Robinsons, the recent adaptation of Charlotte's Web, Meet the Robinsons and The Kingdom. He is currently working on Wanted, starring James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman and Angelina Jolie.
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