Hellboy's Screenwriter Wrote A Big-Budget Hellraiser Sequel That Got Cancelled

Only deep-cut horror fans may know that there are 11 extant "Hellraiser" movies. Clive Barker kicked off the property by writing and directing 1987's "Hellraiser," itself based on Barker's novella "The Hellbound Heart." The film revolved around a mysterious wooden puzzle box — the Lament Configuration — that, when solved, could summon a cadre of terrifying Cenobites from a parallel dimension. The Cenobites are essentially undead sadomasochists who appear to torture their summoners to death. Being S&M junkies, however, the torture is meant to be the ultimate sexual experience. For them, pain and pleasure are one and the same.

In 1988, there was a theatrical followup titled "Hellbound: Hellraiser II." Directed by Tony Randel, the sequel took the sexual obsessions of the first movie into deeply surreal territory; a large portion of the sequel is set in Hell, a maze-like realm overseen by a sentient, building-sized obelisk called Leviathan. The third "Hellraiser" film, called "Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth," was an American production directed by Anthony Hickox, and it followed the beats of a more conventional slasher movie, presenting the Cenobite Pinhead (Doug Bradley) as a villain who wanted to escape Hell and commit murders on Earth. (It's not great.) The fourth theatrical "Hellraiser" film was 1996's "Hellraiser: Bloodline," a movie that had a very, very troubled production. (It's credited to Alan Smithee, but was helmed by SFX guru Kevin Yagher.)

The franchise moved to the director-to-video (DTV) market after that, churning out a string of low-budget follow-ups (most of which were mediocre). It seems, though, that one of those sequels might've been great, as screenwriter Peter Briggs (the 2004 "Hellboy") had written what would've been the seventh "Hellraiser" film. His movie was to be titled "Hellraiser: Lament," and he had a whole treatment written — something he talked about in detail during a 2021 interview with Bloody Disgusting.

In the BD interview, Briggs recalled being approached about his "Hellraiser" project after the success of 2003's "Freddy vs. Jason" (which he had written a "Development Hell" script draft for). At that point, the most recent "Hellraiser" movie was 2002's "Hellraiser: Hellseeker," the sixth entry in the property. Briggs was also known around Hollywood because he had penned an early draft for "Alien vs. Predator" way back in 1991. That film was in development hell for years, though, and wasn't completed in earnest until the early months of 2004. (Ultimately, Briggs wasn't credited for his work on the movie.)

Miramax, which owned "Hellraiser" in the early 2000s, was the studio that reached out to Briggs about his "Hellraiser" sequel, asking for a treatment. While Briggs never wrote a screenplay, he did pen a 15-page outline for "Hellraiser: Lament." His film would've directly continued the events of "Hellraiser: Bloodline," ignoring the previous two DTV sequels. Like "Bloodline," it was also going to be a history-spanning film, taking place in both the present and the distant past. The central conceit of "Lament" was that Pinhead and his retinue have become a little too zealous with their bloodletting and are now being held prisoner in Hell. 

A flashback would then reveal that a team of miners, working in the 1750s, were salvaging a mysterious metal out of the remote mountains of the nascent United States. The metal, Briggs explained, was shards of Leviathan, somehow shaved off and dredged up from Hell. That metal would become the foundation of a small town called Lament. Meanwhile, the mining operation was to be led by Duc de L'Isle, the character played by Mickey Cottrell in "Bloodline." The story would then fast-forward to the present, where the main action would take place.

In the present, Briggs continued, he introduced a pretty standard set of characters that included the protagonist, a troubled teenage girl. Meanwhile, a local scientist discovered a long-buried shard of Leviathan, bombarded it with radiation to find out what it was, and, in so doing, accidentally released Pinhead from his prison via a radiation-based entrance to Hell. While the portal could be close, the scientist, a character named Gardiner, would reveal himself to be a BDSM enthusiast whose calculations on the Lament metals were meant to unlock the secrets to Hell portals. The notion of an obsession with Hell leading directly to the opening of Hellish apertures is a theme that was introduced in "Hellbound: Hellraiser II."

The various characters would ultimately try to open or close the doorway to Hell, based on their personal motivations. "Lament" would them climax with Pinhead facing off against Angelique, an ancient demonic Cenobite introduced in "Bloodline."

Briggs admitted that he wasn't a "Hellraiser" guy going into "Lament," but he was game to do the research. As he put it:

"I remember, at the time I went out and bought like everything I could get my hands on to do with ['Hellraiser']. I was reading the Wachowskis' 'Hellraiser' comics, and saw all of the movies I'd missed. [...] I mean, I wouldn't claim to be an expert in 'Hellraiser,' but whenever somebody gives me a project to do, I try and find out everything I can on it so that I can take care of continuity. So it obviously fits within continuity, and it is a self-enclosed story in as much as it starts and ends and events happen within it." 

Eventually, the project was dropped for budget reasons. The DTV "Hellraiser" movies were only made for about $2 million a piece, while Briggs' flashbacks and Hell Wars would've been too expensive to visualize. So, "that was that," Briggs recalled. Nothing more ever came of "Lament." Instead, the seventh "Hellraiser" movie ended up being a cheapie in the form of 2005's "Hellraiser: Deader." From the sound of it, though, "Lament" was way more interesting.