Clive Barker, Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton
Russ Fischer – SlashFilm.com
On television, the horror anthology will never die. Now, according to the RiskyBiz Blog, Clive Barker is teaming up with Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton, the writers of the latter half of the Saw franchise and the recent horror pic The Collector, which Dunstan also directed, to create a new show called Clive Barker’s Hotel. Dunstan and Melton have sold their pitch to Warner Bros. Television, and already networks are looking at it as a potential series.
Dunstan and Melton hooked up with Barker when they worked on one of the many abandoned drafts of the Hellraiser remake (still stuck in development hell) and ended up cooking up the idea for this series, which Barker will produce. RiskyBiz doesn’t have a lot of details, but says the thing “is expected to follow a series of ghoulish incidents at a haunted hotel.” Which is all you really need for a horror anthology. It’s certainly no worse than the basis for the old Friday the 13th series, which had the new owners of an antique shop tracking down the cursed objects they’d sold. (And also landed David Cronenberg as a director for one episode, lest we forget.) I’m also thinking of David Lynch’s brief anthology mini-series for HBO, Hotel Room.
Meanwhile, the Hellraiser remake continues to stall. Having finally seen Martyrs I’m perfectly happy that Pascal Laugier is off the project; I’d still like to see Inside’s Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury have their crack, but that window of opportunity is long closed. Too bad, because as remakes go, Hellraiser is one that has some potential. The original film will always be great (especially as a low-budget outing for the directorially inexperienced Barker) but there’s a lot to do with a new version so long as practical effects were still highlighted in the mix.
