#HBO’s Hellraiser TV Show Brings in Original Creator Clive Barker

Clive Barker has joined HBO’s Hellraiser TV show as an executive producer. The new series was announced back in April of this year, with Halloween director David Gordon Green attached to direct pilot and a few more episodes. The series is written by Mark Verheiden (Heroes) and Michael Dougherty (Godzilla: King of the Monsters). At the time of the announcement, Barker was not on board, though the show is based on his novella The Hellbound Heart.

Clive Barker says he is “delighted the Hellraiser mythology is seeing a new life. It’s time the stories went back to their roots. I’m eager to bring to a new audience the most powerful and ancient elements of horror: the darkest evil invading our human lives and how we must find in ourselves the power to resist it.” The HBO series is not a remake and it aims to be an “elevated continuation and expansion of the well-established Hellraiser mythology.”
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Executive producer Dan Farah was apparently instrumental in bringing Clive Barker and his rights into the Hellraiser series through Marc Toberoff. Farah said, “Hellraiser started with Clive’s imagination and we couldn’t be more excited to have him on board.” Aside from the ten movies, the franchise also includes a book anthology, comic books, and global merchandise apparel. There are a lot of ways that the series can go, but it has not been revealed exactly what the show will focus on when it is released. As for when it will be released, that has not been announced at this time. There currently is not a production start date, though one could easily see it starting up early next year.

While not much is clear about David Gordon Green’s Hellraiser series for HBO, Pinhead, “the merciless leader of the Cenobites,” is expected to lead the show. Cenobites are the “formerly humans-turned-demons that live in an extra-dimensional realm and are activated through a puzzle box called the Lament Configuration.” The Cenobites come from hell to harvest human souls and keep balance between good and evil, which is expected to be a big part of the series, along with just about anything having to do with the Hellraiser franchise at this point in time.

Mark Verheiden will serve as showrunner on the upcoming HBO series. Executive producers include David Gordon Green, Michael Dougherty, Mark Verheiden, Dan Farah, Vertigo Entertainment’s Roy Lee, Lawrence Kuppin, David Salzman, Eric Gardner, Andrew Farah, Adam Salzman, Danny McBride, Jody Hill and Brandon James. Hopefully HBO will announce some further details in the coming weeks, or at least before the end of the year. In addition to the Hellraiser series, there is a reboot on the way from director David Bruckner, who promises that he will not “hold back” when tackling Clive Barker’s source material. Deadline was the first to report on Clive Barker returning to the Hellraiser franchise for the HBO series.

Topics: Hellraiser, Hellraiser TV Show