Clive Barker is having a busy year. In addition to the Books of Blood adaptation at Hulu, a Hellraiser series in development in HBO, and the imminent release of his newest novel Deep Hill, the long-awaited reboot of Nightbreed is finally moving ahead. Michael Dougherty (Trick ‘r Treat, Krampus, Godzilla: King of the Monsters) is now attached as a director, writer, and executive producer for Nightbreed, which retools Barker’s cult 1990 horror film into a TV series.
Nightbreed has been in development for TV since 2014, but has passed through multiple hands since then. Its original production studio, Morgan Creek, sold off many of its properties, but deliberately retained the rights to Nightbreed. The series was initially announced in 2018 with Josh Stolberg (Jigsaw, the forthcoming Spiral) as head writer; as of 2020, however, Stolberg doesn’t seem to still be attached to the project.
Barker himself wrote and directed the 1990 version of Nightbreed, adapting the screenplay from his 1988 novella Cabal. Boone (Craig Sheffer, One Tree Hill) has recurring dreams of a hidden city in rural America called Midian, where monsters live in relative peace.
He’s subsequently drugged by his psychiatrist Decker (David Cronenberg, having a disturbing amount of fun here), who has a side hustle as a serial killer. Decker, who specifically targets entire families, tries to brainwash Boone into becoming the fall guy for Decker’s latest series of murders. Instead, that convinces Boone that he’s become a monster, and he abandons his girlfriend Lori (Anne Bobby, BioShock) to search for Midian. In so doing, Boone accidentally sets the stage for a violent confrontation between Midian’s monster population and the nearest town’s police force.
In a lot of ways, Nightbreed was ahead of its time, as it’s the sort of practical effects-driven horror/fantasy that would later make the careers of creators like Guillermo del Toro. It also features a score by Danny Elfman, fresh off of the success of Tim Burton’s Batman. At the time of Nightbreed‘s theatrical release, however, it was saddled with a marketing campaign that depicted it as a cops vs. monsters shoot-’em-up, and the studio recut both the film and its ending against Barker’s wishes. The result was a mild commercial failure, although it slowly developed a cult following over the course of the next 20 years.
Barker eventually got hold of the original footage and created Nightbreed: The Director’s Cut, which was published by Shout Factory on Blu-ray in 2014. It runs 20 minutes longer than the original theatrical version, featuring 40 minutes of new and reshot material and an alternate ending. Another version, Nightbreed: The Cabal Cut, was made by the University of Derby’s Russell Cherrington in 2012, using footage from two extended cuts of Nightbreed that had surfaced on VHS over the years.
Details about Nightbreed‘s series adaptation are currently slim on the ground, to the point where it’s uncertain whether it’s still at Syfy or not. Barker says he’s currently writing a “Bible” for the series and its background lore, and is executive-producing the series alongside Morgan Creek’s James G. Robinson, David Robinson, and Barbara Wall, as well as Barker’s long-time co-worker Mark Miller at Seraphim Films.
Barker’s next project is Brannon Braga’s Books of Blood, which debuts on Hulu on October 7th.
Source: Coming Soon
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