Clive Barker may not boast with the same status among horror writers as Steven King, but it’s exactly Barker whom King was referring to when he said "I saw the future of horror… and its name is Clive Barker". One of the longest and most successful film series in the horror movie genre, Hellraiser, draws from his novels despite the fact that recent films of this saga have been poorly received. It is time for Pinhead to be reintroduced in proper quality for the modern day viewer. And what better way to do that than making a TV series!
Pinhead is a character from Barker's book
The Hellbound Heart. It tells the story of a man with a thirst for forbidden pleasures who comes upon the cenobites, whose leader is Pinhead. They are demonic creatures dedicated to sadomasochism. Their purpose is to torture souls, lost in their dimension, until the tortured learn how to enjoy pain as much as the torturers.
This idea brought about 10 whole movies, the first of which are widely recognized as exceptional. Only the first of the movies follows the script and direction of Barker, while the others were carried out by different artists, playing on the copyrights. The last movie came out in 2018 and is quite bad, Barker himself had expressed his displease before the release date.
The funny thing is that most scriptwriters convert Pinhead and the cenobites into creatures from a place everyone’s acquainted with, namely Hell. Barker, on the other hand, didn’t see things this way – in his novella the cenobites live in their own dimensions, which bears no resemblance to the religious idea of hell (well, except for the purpose of torturing lost souls).
Now HBO have started working on their own version of the story in a new series. David Gordon Green will direct the pilot episode, as well as a few others (if the producers like the first episodes enough to order a full series, of course). Green has already been recognized for his work on the latest sequel to Halloween, which managed to refresh the characters and the story of the old classic with a dignified plot for decades later. The scriptwriters for the project will include Mark Verheiden, who worked on Battlestar Galactica and Heroes, as well as Michael Doughtrey, who worked on Godzilla: King of the Monsters and Trick 'r Treat.
With these talents behind the camera and the legendary status of Hellraiser it's almost certain that the TV series will bring about a lot of interest. In the meanwhile it's not unlikely that the film series could continue. Last year's news stated that filming has commenced for an 11th movie under the direction of David Brookner, but nothing else has been heard of on the matter. It's possible that the rights concerning the movie universe are separate from those concerning the series, so it wouldn't hurt seeing both. Chuky the doll already walked this path and his film series will soon continue in a TV series while at the same time a new movie will restart the whole idea (and it turns out, not a bad one at all).
We're hoping that the series will be realized and that we see it soon!
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