Hellraiser is one of horror’s long-pedigreed franchises starting with the original movie from the long, long ago of far 1987 when Reagan was president and Madonna was a star on the rise. Based on the 1986 novella, The Hellbound Heart by gore-meister and foundational splatterpunk author, Clive Barker, the book (and subsequent film) told the story of a criminal who gets his hands on a rare puzzle box—and solving this demonic Rubik’s cube opens a gateway to hell.
A new film, directed by David Bruckner (The Night House, The Ritual) is coming to Hulu as was announced via their YouTube channel with a small teaser showing off the log to the film and a glimpse of the most famous monster from the Hellraiser franchise, Pinhead, along with the release date: October 7th, 2022.
The franchise—which spawns 4 theatrically released films, 6 straight-to-DVDs, comic books, action figures, video game tie-ins and more—all began with the original film written and directed by Barker himself and focusing on Kirsty Cotton as she deals with the increasing weirdness around her home after her uncle Frank got ahold of the Lemarchand puzzle box, rearranged it into the Lament Configuration, and had a visit from the Cenobites, extreme BDSM-themed demons clad in revealing black leather robes and covered in unnecessary surgeries. They’re led by the one audiences would call Pinhead (Doug Bradley), the bald, pale leader who has a head scored into a grid with a nail hammered in at every corner. Frank gets his lover, Julia, to murder men in the attic in order to absorb them and reform himself after being torn to bits by his initial visit from the Cenobites.
This spawned a sequel in which Kirsty went directly to hell itself (a labyrinthine gray land of torture), a third one set in a nightclub. From there the quality decreased until the films could no longer get theatrical releases. Hence, they stocked the shelves of the local Blockbuster as one of the horror franchises that ran throughout the 90s and early 00s (alongside such other lights as the Children of the Corn and the Leprechaun series). Now it’s gone through one failed attempt to reboot it, an announced series coming from David Gordon Green, and now this one coming from Hulu just in time for Halloween of this year.
There’s no word on how this new movie will affect the future of Green’s series for HBO (though with the up and down there with the recent Discovery acquisition means anything could happen). Barker regained the rights to the franchise after some legal wrangling, so presumably the new film has his stamp of approval. Hopefully, the fans of the series get all the grue and gore they crave from the twisted world of the Cenobites and if the face of Pinhead—now played by Jamie Clayton—is anything to go by, it's reverential to the previous visuals of the series if nothing else. Hellraiser fans shouldn’t have anything to worry about when it premieres on October 7th.