Despite the slew of sequels on the Miramax cards, Drive Angry director Patrick Lussier has yet to hear anything about his mooted Halloween 3D. Things are, however, finally moving forward on the Hellraiser remake, and Lussier has revealed a few of his intentions for Clive Barker's demonoid phenomemon.
"We are officially a go," Lussier told Moviefone (the "we" being Lussier and his professional other half Todd Farmer). "We want to work within the massive Hellraiser mythology that exists and create something unique. We think Clive's film stands on its own. We think it's brilliant: it had such a specific, dark vision that at that time was unlike anything that had come before it. So just a remake of his movie but with more money is not something we wanted to do. We wanted to work within the Hellraiser lexicon."
Addressing the rumours of a possible shift in tone to aim for a teenage target audience (previous reports suggested some draft scripts with Hellboy-ish fantasy vibes, and others with an Elm Street bent), Lussier gasps a horrified "Oh God, no. We definitely did not want to do that. We wanted to make a grown-up movie." Everyone breathe a sigh of relief.
"The sequels all went on to be smaller in scope," he continues, "but our idea was that if we're going to do it, let's be epic, and explore the doorways and opportunities that Clive created, always keeping in mind what he did and how he did it. There's a part of this world that we're never allowed to see because there's never been the resources to show it, so let's show it."
Lussier and Farmer's eagerly-awaited Nic-Cage-escapes-from-Hell car-wrecking extravaganza Drive Angry is out in the UK on February 18.