Last February we broke the news that A Nightmare On Elm Street‘s Heather Langenkamp would be starring in Gary Tunnicliffe‘s Hellraiser: Judgment, a new sequel currently in post-production for a hopeful release later this year. Even before that, Patrick Lussier was set to direct a new Hellraiser from a screenplay by Drive Angry collaborator Todd Farmer, which was to be a prequel to Clive Barker‘s feature film adaptation from 1987. In fact, the last time we even talked about Barker’s own remake was back in 2014 when he has sat down with Dimension Films chief Bob Weinstein with his second draft, allegedly to introduce an all-white Pinhead. Point is, Dimension has clearly moved on from Barker’s vision two-fold, and we had even heard unconfirmed rumors that Blumhouse was tinkering with the franchise for over a year (I’m not sure how the rights worked out to allow this? Maybe it was based on a different Barker novel or character?) before giving up on it.

But I digress, fans still want Barker to get behind the camera for a remake, and thus continue to ask the famed horror icon about it. During a Shudder live chat on Twitter, Barker exclaimed, “The script was written and delivered to Dimension years ago [see above]. That was the last anyone heard until news of a sequel surfaced.“

This confirms that Barker is no longer developing a remake for Dimension, which as I stated above isn’t all that surprising considering they have Judgment already in the can. With that said, the alleged reason Judgment was rushed into production was to retain the rights, which means Dimension can spend another five years spinning their wheels on a remake that will never happen. Thank god Halloween was able to sneak out of the grasp of the brothers; we can only pray the same happens with Hellraiser, which is clearly trapped in hell.

I’m a huge fan of the Hellraiser franchise, but the only film that feels authentic is Barker’s original independent production thats story isn’t centralized on Pinhead, but Uncle Frank and Julia. Everything after that is something different. While I can’t wait for Judgment, the only Hellraiser I’d sell my soul to see is one backed by Barker.

Would you sell your soul for Barker’s return to Hellraiser?