Promotional art for the upcoming R-rated Hellboy reboot Rise of the Blood Queen is on display at this year's Cannes Film Festival. Fans of the big red guy were surprised earlier this month when it was announced Millennium Films would be making a new movie starring the character, with Stranger Things standout David Harbour in the title role. Game of Thrones and Westworld director Neil Marshall will call the shots from a script co-written by Andrew Cosby and Christopher Golden. Plot details are being kept under wraps for now, but the promise is that this interpretation will be darker and more gruesome than the movies directed by Guillermo del Toro in the 2000s.

With a creative team firmly in place, the biggest question on viewers' minds is when Hellboy will return to theaters. Recent reports have indicated the plan is to start rolling the cameras as early as this September, meaning the studio is wasting no time in getting Rise of the Blood Queen through the pipeline. Based on a poster Cannes attendees can check out, it would appear that rumor is accurate, as a tentative release date is being teased.

Bloody Disgusting shared an image of the one-sheet, which was crafted by Hellboy creator Mike Mignola. In it, the character is aiming his pistol at an unseen enemy while smoking a cigarette - a classic pose longtime fans will instantly recognize. While the artwork itself isn't anything all that new, viewers will certainly be drawn to the Rise of the Blood Queen title (confirming the working name of the project) as well as the "2018" across the bottom. This indicates Millennium is targeting next year as Hellboy's release date. You can check it out by clicking the link below:

Click for Hellboy Promo Art

If Rise of the Blood Queen is to come out in 2018, then the ball is going to have to get rolling soon. September is only four short months away, and there's still a good deal of pre-production work that has to be done. While Harbour is locked in as the lead, Marshall needs to round out the supporting cast. It's possible that the filmmakers have already conducted some screen tests for secondary roles, considering that this film came together relatively under cover of darkness. Millennium could simply be waiting for the right time to make further announcements. Either way, the studio is going to have to fill out the rest of those parts in the near future so everyone has time to prepare ahead of shooting. It wouldn't be a shock if some reveals were right around the corner.

Millennium's extreme fast track of the new Hellboy could be attributed to them wishing to capitalize on the new trend of adult orientated comic book adaptations that have found tremendous success. Over the last few years, works like Kingsman: The Secret Service, Deadpool, and Logan have all been critically acclaimed box office hits, so the hope is Rise of the Blood Queen can replicate that performance. Of course, the lesson to be learned from those movies isn't that they were beloved because of the R rating, but because the creative team was allowed to tell the story they wanted. As long as the new Hellboy can deliver a compelling narrative, things should be in good shape.

MORE: What David Harbour Would Look Like As Hellboy

Hellboy: Rise of the Blood Queen is expected to hit theaters in 2018, but does not have an official release date as of this writing.

Source: Bloody Disgusting