French pair remaking HELLRAISER

By Matt Holmes / June 25, 2011

A Hellraiser remake has finally been confirmed, with the rookie French duo Julien Mary and Alexandre Bustillo given the task of writing and directing a new attempt to resurrect the franchise for Dimension Films. Clive Barker is on board as producer and it's his draft script, the duo will be re-writing. Dimension are of course the studio who recently remade Halloween successfully (financially at least, $61 million worldwide) and will be hoping for the same kind of success here, hiring two guys whose only contribution to cinema is Inside, an 88 minute French film. I've never thought of Hellraiser as being anywhere near on the same level as John Carpenter's masterpiece, so I'm less pissed at this remake than I would be for most others. I mean hell, they have pretty much been making a Hellraiser movie non-stop for the last 20 years. The original film made $14 million back in 1987 and became such a big hit on VHS and gathered such a cult following, it spawned seven sequels, though the last couple have been straight to DVD. The last theatrical Hellraiser was in 1996, with Hellraiser: Bloodline.

The original film revolved around a couple who move into an old house inhabited by the man's eviscerated half-brother, who escaped hellish torture from the Cenobites but returned shorn of his skin. The Cenobites, who are triggered by a Rubik's Cube-like puzzle device that unlocks the gates of hell, would like another meeting with the man.

Nothing is sacred these days and if it wasn't Hellraiser that was being remade then it would be something else ya know? If studio's have truly ran out of ideas for films, why not re-release these originals and spend some money advertising them and building hype around them and try and make a little profit doing it that way. I mean the excuse they always come up with for remakes is 'bringing the original to a whole new audience', well why not just re-release it and promote the film as being a brand new one? If the trailer looks good and you re-tweak it to sound as if it's a new and upcoming release... people might go and see it and it would be an extremly cost effective way to make some money. It wouldn't cost much to experiment with the idea anyway. Give an old genre classic a chance at a re-run and see what happens. I would probably see Hellraiser on the big screen at halloween time, I certainly would have seen the original Halloween if they did that.