The problem with the US is that they have low confidence in animated features having the kind of draw that live action would have (see the straight to film movies you mentioned). Meanwhile most other places in the world really love animated movies. That said if they really went and gave a good sized budget for something animated for Hellboy i think they could do amazing things.
Live action would be pretty excellent, i can also see a faux stop-mo but done in CG as being just as good. Either way more Hellboy is something i’d like to see, i just hope they lean more into a slower paced story rather than trying to do flashy action movies. In the graphic novels and comics the story lines tend to be slower paced and i really love that.
