Jamie Clayton is Pinhead in Hulu’s Clive Barker-authorized Hellraiser remake
Hellraiser is back, again, for a "loyal, yet evolved reimagining"
Aux News Clive Barker
Hell has a new head to pop a bunch of pins into, with The Hollywood Reporter saying that Jamie Clayton from The L Word: Generation Q has joined the cast of David Bruckner’s new Hellraiser movie. Clayton will be playing Pinhead, the leader of a group of perfectly nice and respectable extra-dimensional beings called the Cenobites who have gone so deep into sadomasochism that they can no longer differentiate between pleasure and pain. They also have a particular appreciation for ripping into skin and twisting it into new and exciting shapes, and while we’re not saying it’s wrong, we are saying it’s not necessarily everybody’s cup of tea.
Traditionally, that is what the Cenobites are all about in the many, many other Hellraiser movies. Some human gets bored with whatever Earthly pleasures they’ve experienced and craves something more, they solve the evil puzzle box to summon the Cenobites, and then they rip their skin off. We don’t know exactly what’s going to happen in this new Hellraiser, but it will presumably be some variation of that, and THR adds that it will be a “loyal, yet evolved reimagining” of the original film (and the Clive Barker novella that the movie was based on).
In addition to Clayton’s Pinhead, the movie will star Brandon Flynn, Goran Visnjic, Drew Darkey, Adam Faison, Aoife Hinds, Hiam Abbass, and Selina Lo. Barker is producing the film, having recently regained the rights to Hellraiser, and he says it’s “Hellraiser on a scale that I simply didn’t expect.” The film is expected to premiere on Hulu at some point next year, and as far as we can tell, this is the same Hellraiser reboot that was previously conceived as a TV series on HBO as recently as last October. Either that or we’ve got multiple Hellraisers running around, which is fine, if that’s what people are into.
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I fondly look forward to all the white dudes recording videos of themselves driving their pickup trucks and yelling about how Girl Pinhead is ruining American society or something.
Especially since, in the original novella, Pinhead’s androgynous and speaks with a feminine voice.
Today I learned – there’s a book for Hellraiser.
The Hellbound Heart, by Clive Barker. I remember reading it in high school or maybe college. The Cenobites are rather different than the movie version.
Also in the comics Laurie becomes the new Pinhead/high priestess of hell
You are the perfect mix of an insufferable neckbeard and a self-righteous wokescold.
At least that’s a step in the right direction of they call a trans woman a girl.
Legit had no idea she was trans. I doubt Joe-Bob and Bryan who are going to be yelling in these videos will have any idea either.
Her role in Sense8 makes it quite awesomely clear.
Yeah but not everyone’s seen Sense8 which was part of the problem which led to its abrupt truncation.
ugh childhood ruined again….
I was really hoping this movie would get a wide theatrical release so I could bathe in the Christian upheaval. A streaming release is still satisfying though due to not having the stupid rating restraints.
Casting a trans woman is a further cherry on the hilariously inevitable outrage sundae.
Hellraiser was always too bloody weird and arthouse for Christian Outrage (TM). To them it was just another video nasty, “violent and gory”. To understand the really fucked up stuff, you have to actually engage with it and watch it the whole way through.
The funny thing, to me, is that Pinhead was actually not even MEANT to be the main cenobite, that was actually the lady with the throat opening, but they had to give her role to Pinhead as… Well partly the prosthetic she had on making it hard to talk, but mostly sexism. And now due to Pinheads popularity and iconic status, rather then giving her her proper role as the leader of the cenobites back, they are gender flipping the random dude with nails in his noggin! I get why, Pinhead/The Hell Priest has become the star of the franchise, but I find it really funny that anyone arguing that, “They should change it back to the way it was!” Would actually be inadvertently just advocating for ANOTHER woman to be the lead as it was always meant to be!
Also my own two cents is just to ditch pinhead and do a whole bunch of NEW weirdo cenobites since ‘comforting familiarity of classic looking monsters’ is sort of… Weird to be going for given the whole idea of cenobites is that they are freaky and make you feel super discomforted so having audiences go, “ Hey that lady hammered nails into her head to try and find new depths of sensation to get off to! YAY! I REMEMBER THAT FROM WHEN I WAS A KID!” Is kind of missing the point a bit, IMO… But hey I am a chimp and will clap and cheer along with everyone else so they are probably right to lean into nostalgia. Heh
Also trans rights! Obviously.
THE SADOMASOCHISTIC DEMONS IN MY AMERICA’S CLIVE BARKER ADAPTATIONS ARE PROUDLY NON BINARY, YA’LL!
I’m just excited because they finally found somebody that will be a sexier Pinhead than Doug Bradley!Jokes aside, Jamie is fantastic. I couldn’t get to into the L Word revival or Sense8, but Jamie is so charismatic.
The Mistress has spoken.
You are the perfect combination of an insufferable neckbeard and a self-righteous wokescold.
What I love about the original film, apart from the fact that most of the Cenobite scenes involve them walking very slowly towards camera in the style of a 30’s zombie picture, is that it can’t seem to decide if it’s set in England or not, in spite of being obviously shot there. I think the sequels settled on pretending it had been the USA all along.
Apparently they redubbed half the voices because the studio demanded it be more American.
My favorite things about the original film is that the dad looks distractingly like Liberace throughout.(I looked him up after seeing it, and his previous major screen role was playing Liberace in a Liberace biopic.)
I will probably not be watching this (just not my thing) but I loved her in Sense8, and I’m glad to see her getting more roles.
I came here to comment “We all know that she’s Sense8’s Jamie Clayton!”
We can all agree no one thinks of her from Designated Survivor, at least.
Or her couple of scenes from ‘The Snowman’.
Yup, she’ll always be Nomi for me. Such a great performance, especially whenever she got to show off her amazing chemistry with Freema Agyeman.
You mean Mass Effect Andromeda’s Jamie Clayton, who also appeared in Bojack Horseman?
Anytime a good casting choice like this happens you get all the conservatives inhaling their rage farts and all the libs inhaling their smug farts. Both sides create a person of the opposing side in their mind, and suppose that this person of the opposing side is hurt when media reaffirms their own positions, but in reality these media choices have no effect on society but only reflect it. Im not even calling for radical centrism because I believe in socialist thought, but it is like a zero sum game in the minds of everyone that doesn’t actually exist. They all assume that if this show validates their ideology than the show is good and it has made them a better person, a better conservative, a better liberal but really they have gone nowhere. Anyway I just hope the show is good clive barker is a a king and she seems like a cool pinhead that can tear me apart.
I kind of doubt conservatives are thinking much about the Hellraiser franchise.
Why? I think plenty of conservative people love edgy things.
It’s a 10 film franchise for which few remember any beyond the first entry.
This is a comment on the av club
Evangelical Christians? Probably not. The younger, tech savvy, basement dwelling variety of conservative? They are absolutely going to have a very strong opinion about this.
Since those are quite clearly nails, not pins, in the head of the cenobite in question, could we also take this opportunity to name the new/reimagined character Nailhead?
I don’t think Barker used the name “Pinhead”, just as Romero didn’t use the word “zombie”.
Indeed! The character wasn’t named in The Hellbound Heart and was “Lead cenobite” in the movie, I believe.I don’t love Nailhead either, by the way! Fingers crossed that the new movie actually provides her with a name that’s both accurate and cool.
There’s also the Pinhead of the Puppet Master franchise…
One of my favorite bits in Scarlet Gospels was Pinhead’s distaste for that name. You could feel Barker seething through it all.
Its the only good bit in the book. Well the whole prologue is fun really.
Perhaps he’ll be replaced with an Ewok.
Or we could just call the character Pendant.
I preordered The Scarlet Gospels. I read it on the day it came out. It was one of the most disappointing books I’ve ever read.So yeah, if Clive authorized it I’m going to stay far, far away.Also: I’m goddamn tired of Hellraiser when there’s 2 Books of the Art, Imajica and Weaveworld just waiting for prestige TV.
“So yeah, if Clive authorized it I’m going to stay far, far away.”
Because it’s not possible that someone wrote a great script and showed it to him and he thought it was great?
Or it’s not possible that he has any credibility left because a book was disappointing. A book, mind you, that you preordered and read on the day it came out because presumably you’ve been a fan of his for a long time?
Jesus fucking Christ, would you grow the fuck up?
I’m still waiting for Netflix or HBO or someone to do a series adaptation of The Great and Secret Show.
I’ve heard Amazon had the rights to Imajica but that was years ago now.
I really really liked that book, but I don’t think it would work as a series.
I enjoyed it, but yeah, it was *not* what I expected or wanted from the supposed final word on the franchise.
The Scarlet Gospels was truly awful, especially the anime ending. Fan fiction quality to be sure.
It was like he submitted a first draft and the publisher said ‘Go with it!’
There’s also the 3rd Book of the Art waiting to be written for *looks up when the second one was released* holy shit, 27 years??
iirc there are rights issues of some sort, at this point I don’t think it’ll happen and I don’t know that I want to read it anyhow.
There are rumors he didn’t even write it.
But yeah, Clive has fallen off in a big way. I haven’t liked anything he’s written since Coldheart Canyon. At one time in the 90s I considered him my favorite author by quite a large margin, now he’s not even in the top 10. His art is still pretty great though, so there’s that.
A gay friend of mine said that ever since Clive got married he just turned into another boring suburban daddy. Like, sure that’s a fetish too, but not really compatible with the guy who wrote the Books of Blood.
Pretty much, yeah.
My understanding is he’d fallen quite ill some years ago and that’s the primary reason for the drop in both quantity (remember how long his books were in the 90s? Compare that to the relatively modest size of TSG) and quality of his writings.
There are hints of his style around it, it just felt like a slapped together first draft.
How many of these did they make lol. At least this one might have slightly better direction
They made at least 10 Hellraiser films.
Need a Saw-Hellraiser crossover movie.
SawRaiser? Hell Sawer?
Saw Hell Rising with sound track by CCR!
A shared love of puzzle boxes?
We have such sequels to show you.
A friend and I watched all eight (that existed at the time) in the same week.Honestly, 5 or 6 might be the best; I forget which one I liked but those two are the ones that are about a police detective with amnesia – *different*, unrelated police detectives with amnesia, bizarrely. 8 is by far the worst. Weirdly, one of the largely indistinguishable pretty young victim characters in it went on to be Superman.
THR adds that it will be a “loyal, yet evolved reimagining” of the original filmOh god they’re going to go the Cruella route aren’t they? Pinhead as #Girlboss. Happy to see Jaime Clayton in more things I guess.
“Oh god they’re going to go the Cruella route aren’t they? Pinhead as #Girlboss. ”Yeah, that really sounds like something Clive Barker would gush over. THAT sounds like what Clive fucking Barker would think of as “evolved”.
Probably not that they’re going further than even he thought he could go when he wrote the book, by having a TRANS person portraying Pinhead?
Jesus fuck, so many people are so fucking stupid.
Pinhead was never really a villain, though. He/She/They usually help the hero, and as the high priest of hell, I would posit that Pinhead has in fact always been a hashtag-girlboss.
Just no. It’s being produced by Barker himself and in no way is Pinhead portrayed that way in the story. Well I mean kinda they’re a total badass and dress rad, but I don’t think that’s what you mean.
“and as far as we can tell, this is the same Hellraiser reboot that was previously conceived as a TV series on HBO as recently as last October.”
How far did you go in trying to tell? Not as far as google, I guess. Or Wikipedia. But that’s for investigating for us.
Hell yeah! I was all in on everything about this new version thus far, but now my hell flames are stoked further.David Bruckner is one of my favorite new voices in horror. The Ritual is especially fantastic and very much looking forward to watching The Night House this weekend, actually.
Clayton was great in Sense8.
There’s a scene where Lito and Will meet up in the mind-space and Lito says, “We had sex. It was very special”, and Will is kind of sputtering his way through a response. Nomi’s reaction is a really great “I don’t have time for this male bullshit” shutdown, and Clayton sell it so perfectly.
oH gReAT! wOKe HelLrAiSEr! Whaaaaa!
Meh. It is what it is. If it succeeds, then great. If it fails, then it’s no different than the other failed Hellraiser movies even if it is a remake.
Some chuds may balk at the casting, but for me/my money, Doug Bradley’s Pinhead is so iconic that the decision to eschew same-demographic lookalike casting feels like the more respectful and respectable approach. Casting other dudes has already been tried twice in latter Hellraiser movies, and they both sucked.
Damn, there’s 9 of these?
Cool casting, she looks like she could be Lena Headey’s younger sisterI hope by the “scale” Barker is referring to that we are going to go into the hellworld labyrinth like in Hellbound. I always love seeing what films come up with for their “Nightmare on Elm Street” dream world or their “Insidious” or “Poltergeist” beyond the veil of reality, my favorites are the ones where we actually get to spend an extended amount of time there (probably why I’m one of the few who rewatch that Silent Hill movie)Cautiously optimistic!
Here’s hoping they do a better job than both Books of Blood adaptations we’ve had so far. Both of which spent the bulk of their runtime adapting the wrap-around story instead of the actual substance of the book.