As anyone who’s familiar with his bibliography—which includes plays, screenplays, and some shockingly successful YA novels—knows, Clive Barker is not just “the Hellraiser guy.” But also: Clive Barker is totally the Hellraiser guy, and so it’s probably something of a relief to the producers of David Gordon Green’s upcoming Hellraiser TV show at HBO that Barker has just signed on to serve as an executive producer on the series, granting them access to a dimension of infinite pain and pleasure and also of not getting yelled at for trying to do a Hellraiser show without Clive Barker’s input.
Said series was originally announced back in April, with Green—fresh-ish off his successful Halloween reboot from 2018—attached to do a supposedly “elevated” version of Barker’s story and subsequent self-directed film. Per Deadline, the series is being written by Michael Dougherty (Trick r’ Treat) and Battlestar Galactica’s Mark Verheiden, the latter of whom will serve as showrunner. (Green is on board to direct the pilot and the first few episodes.)
Barker, who based his hit 1987 film, which introduced metal detector favorite Pinhead to the world of cinematic horror, on his story “The Hellbound Heart,” has now formally joined the series as an exec. In announcing the news, Barker said that he was “delighted the Hellraiser mythology is seeing a new life. It’s time the stories went back to their roots.” (Having sat through nine of the damn things as the returns increasingly diminished, we’re pretty sure our film team would co-sign that sentiment.) “I’m eager to bring to a new audience the most powerful and ancient elements of horror: the darkest evil invading our human lives and how we must find in ourselves the power to resist it.”
Remember to make your voting plan ASAP.
13 Comments
I assume this will have Pinhead facing off once again with his greatest foe: David Spade!Also, fun fact, Marvel once did some Hellraiser comics under their Epic Comics imprint. They actually collaborated with Clive Barker to even expand the lore. Though they did introduce Atkins, a Cenobite who looked like every 90’s anti-hero and all he did was shoot guns and acted like a jackass.
I collected a few of these in high school. Which was funny because my mom had to buy them for me. Luckily she’s also a horror fan so didn’t mind.
I want there to be an Evil Dead 2/Hellraiser crossover so that Ash can say “Alright you primitive pinheads!”
Get back to writing CB
Excellent! Hellraiser/The Hellbound Heart is a rich source of material and CB’s involvement-but-not-direction should help.
I stopped after the one with CD Head. Are you telling me they actually figured out how to get worse after that?
Time to praythat this will actually be good.
I’d be excited but expect it to have a $5 budget.
Pinhead’s head only has one pin.
And if you look closely it’s just a rusty staple that someone tried to straighten out.
Another fun fact – Barker went to the same high school as John Lennon, and the same primary school as both Lennon and George Harrison.
“Elevated” absolutely fuck that.
I still remember the moment I was like “wait…the cenobites…are the good guys?”