One of the first curious details aboutNeil Marshall’sHellboy reboot came when actorEd Skrein was cat as Ben Daimio . In the Hellboy comics , Daimio ’s always been Japanese - American . Skrein , notably , has always been quite white , and so the interrogation on everyone ’s minds at the metre was what , exactly , was Lionsgate play at .
After repercussion , and upon find out the character details , Skreindecided to tread down from the roleand the studio apartment apparently come to its weed andrecast Daniel Dae Kim as Daimio . But the point still stands that somehow nobody thought of how bad the optic of whitewashing the character would be .
Speaking toCollider , Lloyd Levin , a producer who ’s work on every alive - action Hellboy movie to engagement , said they “ lost track ” of who the character was inMike Mignola ’s comics :
When we commence let the cat out of the bag about this and we started sing about Daimio , it was age ago and we had already established a story where Daimio was … You know , the story takes place in the U.K. so we were creating Daimio as giving him an English background signal and we lose raceway of who he was in the comic books and we made a mistake … Ed was very very gracious and it was something we all felt we wanted to correct .
It ’d be lovely if Lionsgate and other studio would find out from this mistake and do better to avoid exchangeable issues in the hereafter , but that ’s not likely to be the case . So long as people of color are n’t in positions of authority in the rooms when these sort of originative decision are being made , stuff like this is probably give way to keep happening .
For more , ensure you ’re follow us on our new Instagram @io9dotcom .
FantasyHellboyLionsgate
Daily Newsletter
Get the best technical school , science , and culture newsworthiness in your inbox day by day .
News from the future , birth to your present .
You May Also Like
