By Am I wrong to say that Hellraiser is a lot like Terminator? Not in terms of genre or tone of course, but how people tend to agree that the first two movies are cinematic classics and everything after that ranges from being okay to god awful? Alien could also be a member of this club, but there are enough people that like Alien 3 where it may be too cool for the loser’s brigade. My point is sometimes it’s okay to let a franchise die and let the earlier movies stand as they are, untarnished by later entries that just keep failing. After a certain point, people will stop remembering them for being cinematic classics and instead associate them with a massive, bloated, disgusting mess of a series.
We’ve known for a while that Hellraiser was going to be rebooted after the success of 2018’s Halloween, but for many a Hellraiser fan, myself included, there’s not really any point. After spending two decades releasing direct-to-DVD garbage like Hellraiser: Hellworld, Hellraiser: Deader, or the accursed Hellraiser: Revelations, I can’t say I’m excited to see Pinhead propped up again for our entertainment. I’m pretty sure at this point Pinhead takes no pleasure in being in so many terrible movies and wishes for death himself.
It was announced today that the Hellraiser reboot has a director attached to it as well as a writing team. Joining David Goyer, who will be writing the original story, will be director David Bruckner. Bruckner has mostly done short horror films like in the original V/H/S and had his first feature, The Ritual, release in 2017. Personally, I’ve never heard of the guy, though hardcore horror fans seem to be pleased with him taking the director helm. He was also brought on to direct a Friday the 13th reboot in 2015, but left the project for unknown reasons. Bruckner will be joined by Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski, who were both writers for Bruckner’s upcoming feature The Night House, to produce a screenplay based on Goyer’s story.
While I may not be familiar with Bruckner’s work, my eagerness to see his reboot is honestly going to stem from how much I enjoy The Night House. I haven’t heard of the movie, but if it’s a solid horror flick then I think I’ll give Bruckner and crew a shot with this reboot. On the bright side, it can’t get any worse than the past five films in the franchise.
‘Hellraiser’ Reboot Finds Its Writers/Director – [Hollywood Reporter]
