When we last left the saga of Dimension Films’ struggle to remake the Clive Barker horror classic Hellraiser, the sturio had just hired writers Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton to take a pass at the screenplay, as they weren’t too happy with the draft turned in by the project’s co-directors, Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury.

Well, it seems that Bustillo and Maury have left the film altogether, as The Hollywood Reporter has announced that French director Pascal Laugier is in negotiations to helm the remake.

This is a dream project for me. I know Clive Barker’s work very well, and I would never betray what he has done. Fans are expecting a definitive Hellraiser, and I don’t want to take that away from them.

Encouraging words from Laugier, if it weren’t for the fact that many already consider Barker’s 1987 movie, adapted from his own short story “The Hell-Bound Heart,” to be fairly definitive in its own right. Still, it should be interesting to see if Laugier incorperates much of the mythology around the Lament Configuration,  infernal puzzle box that summons forth the demonic Cenobite known as Pinhead, that was developed by Hellraiser‘s numerous sequels.

Laugier’s current film, Martyrs, has been sparking much controversy in his home country of France, where it has earned that country’s equivelant of the NC-17 rating for graphic and disturbing violent imagery.