The long-gestating remake of Clive Barker's demonic Hellraiser continues to suffer at the hands of the Dimension cenobites. Seemingly full steam ahead with creative team Patrick Lussier and Todd Farmer at the helm (Drive Angry, My Bloody Valentine), the pair have just revealed that their Hellraiser vision is now unlikely to see the light of day after all.
The tortured project dates back to at least 2007, when Inside directors Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury were attached to direct a screenplay by Saw sequel writers Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton. Then Bustillo and Maury were out, and Martyrs mentalist Pascal Laugier was in. And when Laugier too left through the revolving door, there was a brief dalliance with The Roommate's Christian E Christiansen.
The film seemed to gain some traction with the arrival of Lussier and Farmer, who brought their own script and some firm assurances that rumours of teen-friendly PG-13ness were unfounded. That's apparently now changed again, with their violent vision seemingly increasingly creatively at odds with what Dimension think they want.
"We developed several versions for Dimension, but in the end we never saw eye to eye," says Lussier. "The current story is extremely different from the story we pitched. It’s changed dramatically since we started, and it will probably change a lot more before it’s all over. Originally what they wanted was epic and dark, rated R. It was in our contract. So... if we do Hellraiser, it’s rated R; if they want to do PG-13 then they have to get rid of us."
The studio have consistently scratched their heads about what actually makes Hellraiser tick, but the lamentable recent DTV sequel **Hellraiser: Revelations has at least staved off the lapsing of the rights, and clearly bought time for further rethinking. Whether that musing will bring Hellraiser to rebooted fruition with a new team, and whether it'll be along Barker's demented supernatural S&M lines, remains to be seen.
Shock have scored some cenobite designs for the abandoned project, so head over there to check out what we definitely won't now be getting. We'll also be interested to learn whether Hellraiser's stalling will send Lussier and Farmer back to **Halloween 3D, which was shunted aside in favour of Drive Angry. The next instalment of Haddonfield slashings currently has a release date of October 26 next year, but no creative team that anyone yet knows about...