Caffeinated Clint
The Batman & Robin of the three-dimensional horror movie (as opposed to the one-dimensional horror movies that the Blankman-esque Uwe Boll makes) Patrick Lussier and Todd Farmer were busily working on a flashy relaunch of the Pinhead chronicles aka “Hellraiser”. Sounds like they
- drive angry
from every creative meeting they’ve had with Bob and Harvey over the movie though.
In an interview with Bloody Disgusting today, co-writer Farmer says it’s unlikely he and Lussier’s vision for “Hellraiser” will ever make love to the big screen.
“We developed several versions for Dimension, but in the end we never saw eye to eye creatively. We wish them the best and look forward to seeing what they come up with”, Farmer said. “We expected when we came back from ‘Drive Angry’ that we would jump on ‘Halloween 3D’. But they wanted to do ‘Hellraiser’ first, and we were sort of intrigued by the idea. We’ve done probably three different outlines at this point; we haven’t gone to script yet.”
Farmer says the new film would’ve been a reboot of the ’87 classic by Clive Barker and wouldn’t follow on from the events of “Hellraiser 100 : When Doug Bradley Didn’t Return”.
“It’s not a sequel, Clive’s already told his story. Basically we wanted to reboot, take his world and tell a new story inside his world. The current story is extremely different from the story we pitched. It’s changed dramatically since we started, and it will probably change a lot more before it’s all over.”
Farmer said the main reason that he and Lussier didn’t see eye to eye on the project with Dimension is that the studio wanted a PG-13 movie, not an R. The studio is also keen on making the next “Halloween” film, something Lussier and Farmer have also been involved in, without the ‘R’ on the poster.
“To me it seems impossible to do ‘Hellraiser’ as a PG-13, and it seems DIFFICULT to do ‘Halloween’ as PG-13. What we wrote was definitely not PG-13. Probably the biggest change is that since so much time has gone by, is that I don’t think a sequel to Rob’s ‘Halloween II’ would still play, so I’m not sure that our original script would work. We literally started ours five minutes before Rob’s movie ended. So much time has gone by… there have been other things discussed, other ways to tell that story.”
As for the “Halloween 3” storyline that Farmer and Lussier have written…
”Basically we opened at the end of Rob’s movie; the whole first act is the end of Rob’s movie, at the end of which Michael is killed. But instead of Scout stabbing Michael… Rob had these visions and things, so we had it so that she thinks she’s killing Michael, but it’s a vision and she’s actually been stabbing Loomis. And then Michael puts the mask on her and she stumbles outside (as we see in the theatrical version of ‘Halloween II’), and then when she takes the mask off that’s when we’d switch to 3D. It would be flat until then. Anyway, Laurie survives and is taken to a mental institution, and then Michael returns, but it’s not Rob’s Michael that returns, it’s the Shape – he stalks, he gets the original white mask back, and the coveralls. So it’s still in Rob’s world, but with the Carpenter version of Michael. And of course we had a great role for Tom Atkins; he’d be playing the doctor of the hospital. And the whole time the TV in the rec room would be playing the Silver Shamrock theme, and at one point Atkins would walk by and yell (Farmer switches to a damn good Atkins impression) “Turn that shit off!” And I’d keep my pants on this time. Also, there was never anyone cast. Our intention was to bring his cast back, but it never got that far. Scout may have seen an outline, but no one was ever in negotiations, I’m certain no one was officially attached.”
That sounds fun – but again, not likely to happen if it’s confined to the still waters of cinema PG-13 style.
While Lussier and Farmer wait for the final decision on those two flicks, the latter says they’re also toying with the idea of rebooting another popular franchise while working on a TV project.
Finally, Shock Til You Drop has some concept designs of the Cenobite look the Lussier/Farmer “Hellraiser” remake were planning on using :
