With the Cartoon Network premiere of Hellboy: Blood & Iron, the second animated spinoff the film based on Mike Mignola‘s supernatural adventure comic, coming up this weekend, Ron Perlman chats with Newsarama about his voicework on the project, which pits the hard-boiled demon against vampires, and about what’s going to happen in the eventual big-screen sequel, Hellboy 2: The Golden Army: “I’ve been sworn to secrecy,” he says. “I will say that Hellboy is in it. Also we’ve got a couple more freaks.” Well, that’s all I needed to hear; I’m sold! (Honestly, though I haven’t seen Blood & Iron yet, the first feature-length cartoon, Storm of Swords, was handily the best animated film of 2006.)
We also learn that Perlman was heavily recruited by the producers of the Watchmen adaptation to play one of the flawed superheroes in that graphic novel, and that he’s giving serious thought to playing the early 20th-century news-of-the-weird compiler Charles Fort in another comics-based movie which sounds just bizarre enough to add to my must-see list…But it’s not like Perlman’s a huge fan. “I’ve been in the same room as comics,” he allows. “If it is essential for my work I will read them, but it’s not something that I’ll actually run off and do with great zeal.”