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Hellraiser: Clive Barker Joins HBO Series Adapt as Executive Producer

A little more than six months after HBO gave the project a series development green light (and choosing Halloween weekend as appropriate timing), author Clive Barker is set to help bring Pinhead, fellow Cenobites, and more from his Hellraiser creation to the small screen as executive producer. In a statement first posted exclusively by Deadline Hollywood, Barker said he was "delighted the 'Hellraiser' mythology is seeing a new life. It's time the stories went back to their roots. I'm eager to bring to a new audience the most powerful and ancient elements of horror: the darkest evil invading our human lives and how we must find in ourselves the power to resist it."

Halloween director David Gordon Green will direct the pilot and additional episodes during the season, with Mark Verheiden (Battlestar Gallactica, Daredevil, Heroes) and Michael Dougherty (X-Men United, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Trick r' Treat) serving as series writers and Verheiden showrunning. Verheiden and Dougherty will executive produce alongside Dan Farah (Farah Films), Roy Lee (Vertigo Entertainment), Panacea Entertainment's Lawrence Kuppin, David Salzman, Eric Gardner, and Marc Toberoff. Rough House Pictures partners Green, Danny McBride, Jody Hill, and Brandon James will also executive produce, with Farah Films executive Andrew Farah and Adam Salzman co-exec producing

The series is expected to build off the mythology established in the movie franchise as well as from Clive Barker's novella The Hellbound Heart, with Lee and Farah originally packaging the television rights to the series in June 2019 and sending it out to the broadcasters, cable networks, and streaming services. The series is being described as an "elevated continuation" of the already-established "Hellraiser" mythology, which means the creators of the series work off the premise that the Cenobites' past is already known and established. By going with that approach, the upcoming HBO series won't have to spend time at the beginning of its run having to re-establish a  backstory.

Pinhead will be the focus of the series, as will his supporting Cenobites. Called upon via a puzzle box called the Lament Configuration, the once-human demons harvest human would for Hell to maintain a twisted balance between good and evil. First published in November 1986, Barker's The Hellbound Heart would serve as the source material for a number of films under the "Hellraiser" banner including the original 1987 film, the 1988 sequel Hellbound: Hellraiser II, and a slew of other entries in the franchise.

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