The Hellraiser remake that has been gestating for years at Dimension Films has once again hit a roadblock. It was recently revealed that the powers that be at the studio have put the project on hold for the time being and that Patrick Lussier and Todd Farmer, the director and writer (respectively) who had produced several different script drafts during their time working on the remake, were no longer on the project.

Gary J. Tunnicliffe, the prolific special effects makeup artist who had worked on nearly every Hellraiser sequel made since 1992’s Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth as well as many of Dimension’s direct-to-video genre offerings among others, was given the job of redesigning the series’ iconic monsters the Cenobites at his company Two Hours in the Dark. He also penned the script for the latest DTV Hellraiser sequel Revelations, which recently had a trailer released that drew strongly negative reactions from the horror fan community, and that’s putting it mildly. (You can read about that HERE .) It’s clear that Revelations was put together in a hurry so that Dimension wouldn’t lose the Hellraiser rights before they could get the sequel into theaters. (The Roger Corman-produced Fantastic Four movie from 1994 that was shelved right before its planned theatrical release was created under similar circumstances.)

Tunnicliffe’s Cenobite designs have also been seen, and they look…well they’re not exactly much different than the look of the original sadistic demons from the dark realm where pleasure and pain are one and the same. There’s a definite influence of the famed Swiss artist H.R. Giger in these designs, but they mostly look like rejected designs from an aborted Hellraiser action figure line. The only thing Pinhead is missing is a special chain gun that tears souls apart and is not for children ages 2-7.

I’ve been a huge fan of the Hellraiser series. I liked the first one but I thought the second, 1988’s Hellbound: Hellraiser II, was even better and it remains the best of the franchise. A remake will happen one way or the other and there is nothing we can do to stop it. Let’s just hope they find a great creative team to do this series justice.

Here are the unused Cenobite designs by Gary J. Tunnicliffe. Click on each thumbnail to see a larger version of the picture.

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[Source: STYD]