Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Is Pinhead Lost Forever in Development Hell? HELLRAISER: ORIGINS, A Fanmade Trailer/Pitch Video, Begs Dimension Films To Differ


Remakes. They are such a hot button topic in the horror world. Some people love them, some people hate them. Some people, such as yours truly, sits on the fence. I don't agree with the mindset of shooting something down simply because it falls under a certain set of criteria. Some remakes have been amazing. Others, well, as with any genre, subgenre of category, there are the stinkers. 

This however, is very hard to stay on the fence about. There have been a lot of those this year; the television adaptation of Scream has me very much on edge while talks of adapting The Exorcist for the small screen has my stomach in knots. Hellraiser is special though, much in the same way that people feel that A Nightmare on Elm Street without Robert Englund is a travesty (I am somewhat in that camp), I do not think that Pinhead should be resurrected unless Doug Bradley is beneath the pins. You can put anyone behind the hockey mask, or the white blank ghost face mask, but when Pinhead speaks, reasons and articulates thoughts. This brings it into murky territory. 

For years, there has been talk of bringing Pinhead back; of bringing him into the 21st century. Stuck in development hell for years, some headway was supposedly made in August of 2012 when it was announced that art designed by Paul Gerrard (Battle: Los Angeles) was used in a pitch trailer directed by Mike Le Han (Mrs. Peppercorn's Reading Room) at the request of Dimension Films. Was it finally happening? Well, I imagine that you can guess the outcome of that since this is probably the first you're hearing of it. The art however, looks pretty damn badass: 



 Here's a better idea of what this fabled pitch trailer entailed:

In July Paul Gerrard and Mike Le Han produced a teaser trailer to accompany the pitch document which has many more conceptual designs that revision Hellraiser. Paul designed the new look for Pinhead and was production designer on the shoot and Le Han pulled in all of his film resources and directed the teaser on the new Alex 4:3 camera with anamorphic lenses.
 
With a crew of 47 an over 100 bloodied extras, the shoot was completed and is now in the depths of post production with a massive amount of VFX work being undertaken. Method Studios, Fugitive Studios and Flipbook Animation are helming the chi/VFX with the talented Glen Southern designing (CG build of) the new Hellraiser box.


When the teaser is complete they’ll be presenting it to Dimension Films along with an outline of the first film story and conceptual art pitch document with the hope to work on rebooting the Hell raiser franchise and bringing it into the 21st Century.

THAT is where this story ends, HOWEVER, the journey to get Pinhead back onto the big screen is not over. Reported today on various other horror sites, there is a fan made trailer (some are calling it a pitch video) that is starting to make it's round on the rumor mill. A site has been posted (hellraiserorigins.com), which as of now is only a countdown to Halloween, when the trailer will be released. As of now, it is only known as a fan made pitch video, with the hopes to catch the attention of Dimension. A lot of fans want Pinhead back (especially after the travesty that was Hellraiser: Revelations), but what I'm interested is, do you?




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