The best thing about horror icon Clive Barker is that he talks. He loves what he does, loves what he creates and loves to see his work come to life. Whenever we get a chance to talk with him there are no limits and he'll go into depth on pretty much everything. Beyond the break you'll find our second part of our exclusive chat with Barker, who updates us on all of his Books of Blood properties and reveals to Bloody-Disgusting that Dread director Anthony DiBliasi could be tackling Thief of Always or Pig Blood Blues next. Read on for the skinny.
Clive Barker on BOOKS OF BLOOD Movies for DREAD, PIG BLOOD BLUES and DOWN, SATAN!
MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN may not have gotten the exposure Clive Barker was hoping for theatrically, but he isn’t letting that slow down the packed production slate at Seraphim Films one bit. Using the same low budget model as the well-received MEAT TRAIN, Barker and co. have film adaptations in the works for numerous BOOKS OF BLOOD, including DOWN, SATAN!, PIG BLOOD BLUES and DREAD, starring TWILIGHT’s Jackson Rathbone, which recently wrapped and will likely hit screens later in 2009.
During this second part of Bloody-Disgusting’s exclusive interview with Clive Barker, we got some updates on the next BOOKS OF BLOOD adaptations from Seraphim. We’ll start off with DREAD, which Barker tells us is in the final stages of editing. “I’ll see something close to a final cut very soon,” Barker tells Bloody-Disgusting. “This started as a spec script by Anthony DiBlasi who came in as an intern to Seraphim six years ago. We try our best to advance people to where they want to go and Anthony is, to me, the definitive success story. Here’s a guy who, six years on from joining the company, has written and directed his first movie. And he’s done a fucking brilliant job.”
“[DREAD] is about experimenting on other people by using their phobias and fears and seeing at what point they become mad,” says Barker. “It’s our dread of madness, our dread of enclosed spaces. It’s one of the few stories I ever wrote which has no supernatural content, but it is vicious.”
Vegans and health nuts may want to stay clear of DREAD, warns Barker: “A vegetarian girl is locked up in a room and the only thing she has to eat is a piece of mutton. There’s a piece of mutton in the middle of the floor, water and that’s it. She has the choice - she eats the mutton and lives or she doesn’t. Each day that time passes, the mutton gets [more and more] rotten and the flies get in there and it becomes a more difficult choice.”
Barker says he is quite pleased with DiBlasi’s translation of the material, particularly for his first project as both writer and director. “DiBlasi has done a superb job of mounting the tension into an eruption of incredible violence,” Barker tells BD.
News broke over the summer that IGN.com DVD editor Chris Monfette was adapting Barker’s DOWN, SATAN! for an eventual feature. The project is still in the early stages, but Barker says he is quite pleased with Monfette’s work thus far. “He found a place in my head and heart instantly because he’s so open and talented,” says Barker. “I find him an amazing presence to be in the room with.”
Barker tells us he is superstitious about saying too much about the project until it is further along. “I always feel like if you talk too much about things, they don’t happen. The reason I don’t want to say too much is that the [original] story is five pages long. What Chris has done is mostly Chris. All I can tell you is that the things he has created are superb. When you see it, you go, ‘Oh yes, of course.’ It’s organic, it grows naturally out of what’s on the page, but it’s brilliant.”
After DREAD, the next Barker work to go before the lens will either be PIG BLOOD BLUES or THE THIEF OF ALWAYS, with DREAD’s DiBlasi as a possible choice for both projects.
“We’ve got a couple of options,” says Barker. “PIG BLOOD BLUES is one of them. That’s another script from from Mr. DiBlasi. If I had my choice, since Anthony has done such a superb job with DREAD, it’s a natural thing to want him to do PIG BLOOD BLUES. We also have THIEF OF ALWAYS, which is a completely different project with a different feeling. I know Anthony has been very interested in the possibility of directing that. So there are a couple of possibilities.”
We’ll have more from Bloody-Disgusting’s exclusive interview with Barker this week including the future of the MEAT TRAIN saga, TORTURED SOULS and his secretive horror TV projects.
Can't wait to see Dread, it sounds so good. I bet by the time the girl eats the Mutton it's going to be completly covered in flies and be like totally green.
I rather would love an adaptation of Scarlet Gospels. I know they are doing a Reboot of the Hellraiser Franchise but maybe as a finish for the original Hellraiser franchise or a stand-alone project they really should adapt Scarlet Gospels after the book gets released.
I saw a test screening of "Dread". If they don't mess with it, it will be awesome. It was full of gore and nudity...and it was a good story leading to a great payoff at the end.
Dread is a great story and i'm hoping the film version is too. Hell, I'd love to see the entire Books Of Blood tales on screen. The Skins Of The Father would be a great visual feast as would Son Of Celluloid.
I loved the books of blood, and DREAD is one of my favorites, can't wait to see it. Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament, The Skins of The Fathers, The Yattering and Jack and Pig Blood Blues were all great, let's hope many of these get to the big screen...
"The best thing about horror icon Clive Barker is that he talks."
...and the worst thing about him is that's all he's done for 10 years or so. We hear about a lot of projects, but until I actually see Scarlet Gospels, Galilee 2, Book of the Art 3, etc on the shelf, I have little faith he will actually finish anything. These movies are being finished, and they're great, but they're by different writers and directors.
Come on, Clive. Quit talking, quit promising, and give us a finished freaking product.
it's hard to for him to deliever movies because he tries to have alot of say in the process and he tries to deliever solid products and sometimes doing that takes a while because there's alot of untalented assclowns who try to fuck a creators vision of a story in mainstreaming a film.
how could you even possibly want a Scarlet Gospels adaptation without even having read it?, it has NOT been released yet. maybe you are thinking about the action figure Tortured Souls movie that was talked about a few years back. if not, that goes up there with everyone saying something is going to suck without even seeing,reading,listening to it
oh, and don't say it's because it is going to be good no matter what, that it is barker and all...yes I love his work but have you read his recent books?
I'm not putting them down but seriously....he hasn't been writing a lot because maybe he is out of fresh ideas. I would personally like to see him write more often. Putting out one book every 5 years doesn't cut it...
and the Scarlet Gospels collection has been in the works off and on for like 20 years. That may be a telling sign...I dunno, we will have to see when it is released.
I had always thought that The Thief of Always would make a wonderful movie with the right person at the helm. I used to think that Terry Gilliam would be good...but he seems to have a hard time with the final product coming out within time frames and budgets? I would love to see the movie stay true to the book...but we all know how that usually works out.
Pigs blood blues, was a truly creepy story, as all clives work. I would like to see it on the screen, not watered down though. Thats the problem with the books of blood, they are so grapic and truly horrible in the sense of what the characters go through... So its hard to adapt clives work to appeal to the mass audiences.
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