‘I certainly hope there’s a future there’: Even after 9 sequels and a reboot, a long-running franchise has no intention of going quietly into the night

Everybody knows that no brand bearing even the slightest hint of name recognition is allowed to grow stagnant for too long, and that sentiment arguably applies more to horror than any other genre. Reboots, remakes, legacy sequels, prequels, and requels remain all the rage, but could there be more Hellraiser in our midst?

Having kicked off with a classic back in 1987, the shudder-inducing supernatural saga was eventually run into the ground as the majority of noteworthy scary IPs are wont to do, via a string of subpar successors and utterly abhorrent bargain basement continuations. Thankfully, David Bruckner stepped in with a reboot that managed to justify its existence. Sure, the bar may have been set incredibly low, but landing the second best reviews in the entire Hellraiser saga behind the original is still an achievement.

That being said, things have been awfully quiet on the prospective sequel front since the film debuted on Hulu almost exactly one year ago, but the filmmaker remained optimistic on the chances of returning to the Cenobite well in an interview with ComicBook.

“We’ve been wanting to hear from the audience and I don’t know yet, but I certainly hope there’s a future there, so we will see.”

With The Exorcist: Believer and Pet Sematary: Bloodlines releasing this month alone, never mind recent outings for the likes of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween, Hollywood evidently hasn’t abandoned its lust for the biggest titles of the 1970s and 80s, with that fact alone ensuring the sequel to the Hellraiser reboot can’t be ruled out.