We’ve got a new Pinhead! Jamie Clayton, recently seen in Sense8 and The L Word: Generation Q, has been announced as the iconic character in David Bruckner’s new adaptation of Hellraiser for Hulu. Author/director/general-Hellraiser-architect Clive Barker has also joined the project as a producer.
Spyglass Media Group and Hulu announced the rest of the cast, which includes Grand Army‘s Odessa A’zion, Brandon Flynn (late of 13 Reasons Why) Goran Visnjic (who played Tesla in the Doctor Who episode “Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror”), and Aoife Hinds, who was recently in Normal People.
For those unfamiliar with the Hellraiser universe: they began in 1986 with Clive Barker’s novella The Hellbound Heart, and gradually expanded into an extensive range of stories, films, and graphic novels. Most of them center on a human who comes in contact with the Cenobites—former humans who, through the exploration of extreme sensory experience, have evolved into creatures who don’t distinguish between pleasure and pain. Some people see them as angels, some as demons. The leader of the Cenobites was eventually named Pinhead (or the more dignified Hell Priest) and was played by the amazing Doug Bradley. One of the ways you can get in touch with them, if you choose to do so, is by solving The Lament Configuration with a puzzle box that grants you access to the Cenobite’s realm.
Clayton shared the news in a (frankly adorable) tweet featuring a cameo from one such box:
https://twitter.com/MsJamieClayton/status/1446159688945389568
Spyglass Media Group is producing the reboot for Hulu. Director Bruckner, who recently helmed The Night House and The Ritual, is working with a script by his Night House screenwriters Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski, working from a story by David Goyer. For his part, Goyer honored Clive Barker’s original work, saying, “From the moment I first read The Hellbound Heart, Clive Barker became one of my literary heroes. His work is transgressive and completely redefined the horror genre.”
Hellraiser has become an iconic horror franchise. The first adaptation of The Hellbound Heart was written for the screen and directed by Barker himself, and remains a gloriously over-the-top cinematic experience. The series continued with three more theatrically-released films, six that were released for the home market, graphic novels, and, of course, more Cenobite Halloween costumes than bear thinking about.
Head over to Deadline for more details on the cast and production, and keep working on your puzzle boxes while we wait for a release date!
Hope they can get the mythology back on track. Scarlet Gospels was amazing
I remember pinhead as a child and was horrified. Now, of course, I’m intrigued. Would prefer to read the book and short stories. For Barker fans, is this thought of his best writing?
@librarianna, the Books of Blood are great works, but they’re also early works and rough around some edges, but they have the most recognizable works in them. Lord of Illusions, Nightbreed, Candyman, Hellraiser, those are all found in The Books of Blood. But it also depends on what you’re looking for: straight horror, fantasy, YA.
Writing wise I’d throw The Great and Secret Show books or Imajica out as his best writen works, I also have a soft spot for Galilee despite the lack of love that book gets.
@2: For me Weaveworld and Imajica are my favourite two. By that stage Barker had gone from pure horror to a horror / fantasy style of his own, expanding on themes from The Hellbound Heart and Nightbreed.
I have to disagree about the Scarlet Gospels. It was OK. but the publishers cut out more words than actually made it into the novel. It became very streamlined, but all the flights of fancy and side journeys were removed to make it a single flowing narrative. Which would have been fine if it was a movie script, but a lot of what was teased by Clive in the years prior to the release was cut out. Clive submitted 252,000 words and the book was barely 100,000. He’s far too good a writer for that much to be dreadful and needing to be cut to make the book readable.
As for the new adaptation, I’m cautiously optimistic. Doug Bradley was iconic as Pinhead, but Jamie is a great actor so I can see it working. It just depends on the script and the budget I suppose. Up to Bloodlines the franchise worked well, then the IP holder just kept adding Pinhead and cenobites to pretty average movies just to keep the rights. The last movie was a good attempt at getting the franchise back on track, but it didn’t quite work. Fingers crossed I suppose, with luck my favourite horror franchise of the past can be revitalised for a new generation.