New 'Hellraiser' Won't Directly Remake Clive Barker's Original

I've followed the development of a new big-screen Hellraiser — not the straight to DVD quickies that have defined the series for a few years — because while Clive Barker's 1987 film is a great piece of work, there is enough weight to Hellraiser that it could easily be spun into another film.

Dimension has hired more than one creative team, many of whom have jumped ship. But Patrick Lussier and Todd Farmer (My Bloody Valentine, Drive Angry) were set to write and direct in October, and are writing a new Hellraiser script now, and they're crafting something that isn't quite a direct remake of Mr. Barker's movie.

STYD talked to the duo, who said that they're "keeping it within the world of the box. What the box is and what the box does," with 'the box' being the Lament Configuration, a sort of puzzle box that opens a gateway to a dimension in which buried desires are realized, often through great pain.

But while the box is the key, this sounds like it won't be a direct adaptation of Clive Barker's novella The Hellbound Heart, nor a straight-up remake of the original film. Patrick Lussier says,

To go in and tell the story of [Hellraiser's characters] Frank and the family wouldn't be right... What we went in to pitch with at Dimension was to come at it from a different angle, but go into the same world and see things you haven't been able to see in the other movies. There have been so many films, how can we make this one different?

And the film will definitively be R, with the two saying they've added contract clauses that specify delivery of an R-rated film. That's a good reassurance for those who were worried about rumors of a PG-13 version, and I'm actually happy to hear that they're moving in to new territory with the story.