With a female Pinhead too!
Having very recently watched all the Hellraiser movies, I can say that it’s probably the horror movie series with the worst downhill slope on sequels. 2 was okay. 3 and 4 were disappointing, but had some neat ideas. The rest were either retooled from standalone scripts and turned into Hellraiser movies for the Weinsteins to keep the license, or they are straight-up fan-film levels of garbage.
The last one, Hellraiser Judgment, is a fever dream of high-school quality sets and acting coupled with nudity and blood. It makes Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers look positively Oscar-worthy.
I remember liking the first three, though even those were on a decline. It’s going to be difficult for me to get past the actor who plays Pinhead not being present - I don’t want to shortchange the new actress before she gets her shot, but he seems so iconic to me, and had such a great voice. It would be almost as if Darth Vader started being voiced by Julie Andrews.
Yeah, that’s a tough one to get over. The final two movies had Pinhead played by two different actors (not Doug Bradley) and both of them were terrible. Granted, both movies had zero budget, so I’m sure they didn’t attempt a rigorous casting anyway.
I guess making Pinhead a woman is a way to cut that comparison off at the knees.
Firstly, thanks to @divedivedive for linking to the actual trades instead of someone’s dumb blog post on CoolMovieNews.com or wherever about the announcement.
Secondly, you guys buried the lede! The director is David Bruckner, whose contribution to the original VHS anthology is a short called Amateur Night, which is one of my favorite horror movie commentaries on the victimization of women. He also just directed Rebecca Hall in The Night House, a morose but creepy ghost story with a unique angle and a solid payoff. I would love to see what he does with a Hellraiser reboot focused on a female monster.
And thirdly, this has already wrapped production. Coming to Hulu (uh, hmm?) in 2022.
-Tom
“I like you.”
Oh weird. Has this been announced some time ago and I just somehow missed hearing about it until now?
It’s the first I’m hearing of it, too, but it’s almost certainly been announced already. It seems like the new information out is 1) the Pinhead casting and 2) the fact that Clive Barker is throwing his own money into it after the production has wrapped. I wonder what’s up with the timing of that? Why wasn’t he onboard from the get-go?
-Tom
EDIT: Seems like the timing of Barker coming on board as a producer might be related to a legal battle in which the rights to Hellraiser revert to him on December 19th, 2021.
Which might be why this is a 2022 release?
OK yeah, looks like Clive Barker only recently regained the American rights to Hellraiser. Which is significant, I assume, because the movies have been Hollywood productions?
This quote indicates the movie has at least been circulating for a bit, but wasn’t in production as of the time the article was written (December of last year):
Then there’s a Hellraiser reboot. David Bruckner is directing a script from Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski. It’s unclear where that project stands at the moment – Barker wasn’t listed as attached to the reboot in any capacity before, and if the film isn’t made by December of next year, he’s going to need to sign off on it. Hopefully, we’ll learn more about that soon.
I’m actually in the middle of them right now, too. I just finished 4, and yeah, 1->4 are each a step down in quality, but relatively connected. I actually remember liking the weird disconnected pinhead-shoehorned-in next three or so, but yeah, the couple modern ones without Bradley are wretched. Didn’t they guy who directed Dr. Strange direct one of them, though?
As Tom mentioned, the new director looks promising. I do wish they moved on to a new demon besides Pinhead, though.
He sure did!
It’s not good at all. Inferno is one of the movies that was the result of a converted existing script.
Heh, I’d thought he directed one of the truly terrible last couple. 2000? That’s fine. I think. I guess I’ll see in the next few days, in between killing mutant alien demons in Phoenix Point.
David Bruckner directing and the Night House writers writing this certainly perks up my interest level in a Hellraiser reboot. I had no idea who was behind this.
For me, and I may be the only one, Hellraiser is like pizza. Even a bad one can be tasty.
Based on the last 3 or 4 Hellraiser movies, I need to make a note to never eat pizza with you.
More for me. ;-)
Yeah, by the time you’ve reached Hellraiser: Hellworld, you’re firmly in “Frozen Totinos left to thaw for a week under the couch” territory.
I haven’t seen the last 2 either, but I’m in the camp that likes most of them, even the ones that were reworked from other, non-Hellraiser scripts. I think the worst couple were the Hellraiser in Space one (tried to do too much and just failed at most of it) and the computer game one with Lance Henriksen (where it just became a slasher thing). Which pains me to say, because I loves me some LH.
I’m actually really looking forward to this new one, though. Hulu has done some decent genre work the last few years.
So, I mentioned earlier in the thread that one thing I was curious about, concerned about even, was getting the voice right. And the direction they’re going is certainly interesting, I’ll give it that.
Yeah. They’re certainly not afraid to step beyond the established (garbage) lore.
It can’t be worse than the last few Hellraiser movies, no matter what happens.