“News”: ‘Hellraiser’ Remake Will Be 3-D
by Britt Hayes
Oh hey, look! There’s another remake! And guess what, you guys?!?! It’s going to be in 3-D! While the news of yet another remake should come as no surprise (and if it does, you have more optimism left in your precious head than I), a remake being done in 3-D….well, that’s not really surprising either. Over the last year or so, 3-D has seen a huge resurgence in the film industry. While some films are worthy of the treatment, other films rely on it as a gimmick to get asses in seats. Take My Bloody Valentine 3-D for instance. Take away the 3-D (and the large theater crowd on a Friday night), and you’ve got a pretty lackluster film with no inherent good qualities. Well, the 15 minute nude scene would still be fun, but even that’s pushing it.
Some studios and directors are using 3-D to enhance already well-crafted films, and others are using 3-D because their movies are underwhelming and will struggle without a solid gimmick. 3-D has become a way to guarantee big money. I’m pretty sure there’s a flow chart out there somewhere that studios use to determine whether or not their film should be in 3-D.
The Hellraiser remake isn’t really news. Weinstein and Dimension have long been working on getting the film remade, or rebooted, or re-fuckitwhatever, and it doesn’t seem like they’re slowing down. The original Clive Barker film from the 80′s brought us Pinhead (Doug Bradley) and the famed puzzle box. At one point, Pascal Laugier (Martyrs) was attached to the remake, which seemed like a wonderful choice. If you haven’t listened to Laugier’s diatribe on contemporary horror in the extras on the Martyrs DVD, I suggest you do so. Laugier is impressive, intellectual, and I think he’s going to bring horror fans many great films for years to come.
But Laugier had to leave Hellraiser due to “creative differences”, which makes me wonder how much the studio has input in this film, and how much do they want to fuck it up? At another point, Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury (directors of last year’s other great French horror film, Inside) were involved in the Hellraiser project, which made loads of sense because the female antagonist from Inside was loosely based on Pinhead. But they’ve fallen off as well. There are no updates on who will write and/or possibly direct the remake at this point.
The bottom line is that there will still be a Hellraiser remake, come hell (heh) or high water, and it will be in 3-D. I don’t know that I’d necessarily call this news. It’s not even that big of a deal, especially in the current film climate. In a perfect Hollywood, studios wouldn’t be terrified to finance new original ideas, and people would stop regurgitating the old original ideas and repackaging them as “new”. In a perfect Hollywood, I wouldn’t be telling you guys about a remake of Hellraiser in 3-D – you guys would just go out and buy the original and we’d all be happy. In a perfect world, Hollywood would stop coming up with words to replace “remake” with, just so they can continue to dupe pedestrians into buying into their bullshit. And in a perfect world, we’d stop giving them our money, which just encourages the old recycling factory. I could go on and on about the slow death of film and try to get you as incensed as I am, but you’ll keep giving them your money, and they’ll keep telling us that a remake of Hellraiser in 3-D is news.
In related “news”, Scream 4 was rumored to be in 3-D, but writer Kevin Williamson has flat-out denied the possibility; however, Weinstein is moving forward with Halloween 3-D as soon as Patrick Lussier (My Bloody Valentine 3-D) is free from shooting his current film with Nicolas Cage – Drive Angry. When will they start marketing universal 3-D glasses? That seems like an untapped market. I’m sure when they do, we can all line up to get our $100 pair from Ray Ban.
