Horror TV has been huge these past couple years, and so it makes sense that the powers that be behind the scenes have finally gotten their act together and will be bringing us a series based on Clive Barker’s Hellraiser. This new series is headed our way from IT producer Roy Lee and Ready Player One producer Dan Farah.
Lee and Farah will be joining forces with producer-rightsholders Lawrence Kuppin, David Salzman and Eric Gardner to bring Pinhead and his fellow Cenobites to the small screen for the first time ever. Kuppin, Salzman, and Gardner have controlled the TV rights to Barker’s tale since 1989 when New World Pictures was sold.
Evidently, the producers are currently searching for a writer and a showrunner to take the lead on the planned Cenobite series and will then begin pitching ideas to networks and various streaming platforms. They plan to use the mythology established in Barker’s novella The Hellbound Heart and the movie franchise in general. There isn’t currently word on just what this new series will center on specifically, story-wise, but it’s said the producers are open to the show being either an anthology like Tales from the Crypt or a more “traditional narrative.”
This update on a Hellraiser TV series comes on the heels of the recent news that Gary Barber’s Spyglass Media Group and producer-writer David S. Goyer (The Dark Knight, Blade) are developing a Hellraiser reboot for worldwide theatrical distribution. But no worries, the plan is to continue moving ahead with that film as well. Like the current Child’s Play TV series headed our way from franchise creator Don Mancini, the feature rights to Hellraiser are separately controlled by Spyglass, so it looks like we might have new takes on Pinhead and Barker’s Hellraiser hitting the big and the small screens soon. Which sounds good to this here horror fan! Especially considering that Spyglass and Goyer’s Hellraiser reboot was described as a “loyal, yet evolved reimagining” of the source material.
For those of you that might not know, Clive Barker’s original 1987 film told the tale of a sexual deviant named Frank Cotton who inadvertently opens a portal to hell when he tinkers with a box he bought while abroad and gruesome beings called Cenobites tear Frank’s body apart. Then what is left of Frank is brought back to life accidentally by Frank’s brother and his wife when they move into Frank’s old house. From there the graphic and gooey reanimated Frank convinces his one-time lover, Julia, to lure men back to the house so he can use their blood to reconstruct himself.
Once again, there is no word on whether or not the producers plan to use this as the show’s storyline.
Clive Barker wrote and directed Hellraiser which was produced by Christopher Figg based on Barker’s novella The Hellbound Heart. The film features music by Christopher Young, cinematography by Robin Vidgeon, and editing by Richard Marden and Tony Randel. Film Futures was the production company behind the movie which Entertainment Film Distributors unleashed into UK theaters back on September 10, 1987. This story comes to us via Deadline.
