More and more, it seems like some of the most interesting projects are arriving on television. "Game of Thrones" and "The Walking Dead," for example, have both become critical darlings and ratings hits, but have both had the advantage of being based on a popular series of novels and a long-running comic book, respectively. Branding is still a huge part of selling TV shows, as news from the MipTV market in Cannes has revealed that series based on film franchise "Hellraiser" is in the works.
For anyone still following the "Hellraiser" series, the ninth installment, "Hellraiser: Revelations," was shot in three weeks for around $300,000 so that The Weinstein Company could hold onto the rights long enough for them to complete their long-gestating remake. Do you need us to tell you how 'Revelations' turned out?
While no news on the remake has surfaced for a while, somehow a TV show could be produced as well. The news comes from Variety (via Dread Central), where RHI Entertainment, who was once Hallmark Enertainment, have rebranded to become Sonar Entertainment and now want to produce TV shows instead of trafficking in TV movies. One of their prospects is a "Hellraiser" TV show, which would seem impossible to do considering the trouble The Weinstein Company went to so they could keep the "Hellraiser" rights.
So, how is a "Hellraiser" show being created? Details are fuzzy, but one of the show's executive producers, Larry Kuppin, was once an executive with New World Entertainment, who produced the first two "Hellraiser" films. Started by Roger Corman in the 1970s, New World was purchased in 1983 by Kuppin and others and was ultimately responsible for releasing works of art like "Dead Heat," "Transylvania 6-500" and "The Punisher" before it was purchased by News Corporation in 1997. However, New World still ostensibly exists as a holding company, which may be how the rights for the small screen are still available. If anyone can call a lawyer and Harvey Weinstein to sort this out, it would be greatly appreciated. In the meantime, it looks like Sonar will be working on the TV show, which we're curious to see if it will feature Pinhead and that mysterious puzzle box on a weekly basis, or if the show will be like "Friday the 13th: The Series" which was set in an antiquities shop instead of Camp Crystal Lake and had nothing to do with the film franchise. Will victims still lose the entirety of their skin? So many questions…
I reckon the Harrowers would make a great tv show.
The cool thing about this is that it's actually got a lot of potential. As shitty as the movies themselves are (after the first two), they Hellraiser mythology is so rich and expansive that it is kind of a more modern equivalent of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. Like the Cthulu universe, Barker's Hellraiser world offers a shit ton of leeway for reinvention and interpretation and expansion. I mean, watching every one of the movies proves this, although most of them suck balls – the point remains valid that every one of the movies takes a different approach to the mythology.
It's far more likely that the TV show will be just as much of a disgrace as the recent movie offernings, but at the same time it could easily be another "Highlander: the Series" – at least worthy of a cult following and still a better treatment of the mythos than all but the first couple of films. Let's just hope it's not as dreadfully boring as The Walking Dead.