Guillermo Del Toro says 'Hellboy 3' is "very unlikely" to be made.
The 48-year-old director insists the follow up to 2008's 'Hellboy II: The Golden Army' - in which Ron Perlman reprised his role as the titular character - doesn't have much of a future because he would need around $150 million and several other factors to all fall into place at the same time.
He said: "It's very unlikely it'll happen because you need things to converge so strongly. [Producer] Larry Gordon, Universal, the rights, Ron and mine's availability, [comic creator] Mike [Mingola's] blessing; we have pieces of that, but we don't have all of that.
"You need so many things to confluence and then you need about $150 million."
Despite having an idea and a story for 'Hellboy 3', Del Toro insists the scale of the movie would have to be made even bigger than the second film.
He added to Collider: "The way 'Hellboy 1' and 'Hellboy 2' are very different from each other, 'Hellboy 3' is different enough from the other two that it wouldn't feel like the same universe in scale. He does become the beast of the apocalypse.
"But seeing the apocalypse is getting more and more - the bar is raised higher and higher every year; mass destruction is becoming the sport of the summer."
The franchise is based on the 'Hellboy' comic books, which tell the story of the titular character, a red-skinned demon with a tail, horns - which have been filed off, leaving stumps - cloven hooves and a huge right hand made of stone.
Tagged in Guillermo Del Toro Ron Perlman