The Directors of Inside, the uncomfortably tense pregnant-woman-in-peril thriller from directors Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, talked to Twitch Film about the planned Hellraiser remake…
ALEXANDRE BUSTILLO: We are actually writing the script right now and we don’t want to remake exactly the Clive Barker movie. We have met Clive and told him what we want to do with “Hellraiser” and he said, “It’s f**king good–do it!” We are happy to have his benediction. It will not be a remake. It will still be called “Hellraiser” and it will have a new Pinhead.
JULIEN MAURY: It’s more of an adaptation.
ALEXANDRE BUSTILLO: With our vision we want to be very fair to the cinephile fans of “Hellraiser.” We want to make something very different and something new with it.
JULIEN MAURY: Clive is 100% behind us and that makes us really assured.
ALEXANDRE BUSTILLO: It will be very different. It won’t be like the original “Hellraiser” or that series of movies. We are big fans of the original but we don’t want to do it as a remake since that would be complete nonsense to do [or approach] it that way. Our story is very very different I promise! It will be cool!
Hellraiser creator Clive Barker offers hope to fans looking for a 100% re-invention of the franchise in an interview with IGN Movies.
BARKER: It’s a reimagining. I can’t talk too much about it because the contracts have yet to be signed, but the people who I hope are going to do it, I have very high hopes for. Bob Weinstein chose them. They were sitting here last week and were extremely respectful of the material. So I said, “Go for it, guys.” I’d actually gone to Weinstein four movies ago and said, “Look, let’s reinvent this guy. Let’s put him in white. Let’s start playing against the accepted, the cliche.” And, of course, he wouldn’t do that. But now, however, having run the thing into the ground, they realize that maybe it’s time to do something fresh.
Cenobites in white? Word on the festival circuit is that Inside is nasty little piece of work, so it will be interesting to see just how far the Weinstein Company allows Maury and Bustillo to push the envelope, especially since the Weinsteins have always seemed to court the teenybopper crowd when it comes to horror. We’ll see what happens…
–John
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Filmcans 
After seeing INSIDE I’m highly curious what these guys have in mind for HELLRAISER. I walked out of INSIDE virtually speechless. I did see the Weinstein logo at the beginning credits, so I guess they plan on distributing INSIDE….but I can guarantee that the cut I saw is nothing less than NC-17.
The big question is whether or not Pinhead will be in it. Obviously, I doubt they’ll get the original actor, but will they even try to redo the character? On one hand, it seems like stupidity to not bring over the coolest thing about the original movies, but on the other, it seems like they could fail miserably and not do the character justice. Very interesting.
Though, the sequels have destroyed his character, and the concepts in the first two films are great, the execution leaves a lot to be desired. The best directed Hellraiser movie I’ve seen is the one that no one seems to like – that’s 4. Hellraiser: Bloodlines. Hellraiser in Space. But damn if it doesn’t work for me on so many levels. Maybe because it gives us some of the backstory behind the puzzle box and everything, maybe just the ship at the end turning into a huge puzzle box to kill Pinhead with light. I dunno. But I likes it 😀
The concept of Hellraiser could have been far more disturbing, far gorier, for nastier than anything that Barker put in the original films. They’ve become more slasher-esque with each incarnation, and a re-visioning wouldn’t be a bad thing. They just have to remember to keep things true-to-spirit.
Playing around with Cenobites in white, on ‘What is hell/what is heaven?’ concept doesn’t bother me at all.
More people know Pinhead than the Hellraiser movie, if that makes sense. I’m pretty excited about this project. It sounds like these guys are using the original film as a launch point–maybe even the original published story?
The only straight to vid Hellraiser sequel I watched was the one that was almost exactly like Jacob’s Ladder. It was inoffensive, but forgettable.
I tried watching the one about the video game (it sucked). I know Kirstie came back for one as well, but I don’t know which one. There’s like eight or nine of these suckers now.
sounds cool…but rob zombie remaking halloween sounded cool at the time too.
I think they should remake the movie but date it back in the year 1749 when Philip LeMarchand first started making puzzle boxes. Simlar to some of the stories on pyramid-gallery.com Dont have a pinhead at all in the movie. Have this guy Philip LeMarchand as a kind of jack the ripper dude that starts killing people to make his boxes work. Seems hes killed 30 or so people to make one of his boxes and he has made like 270 boxes in all. I just think it would be better to start from scratch.
Dave
These guys are off the project. The new script is from the writers of Saw IV and Feast with no director announced.
Oh well…