Slashers Go to Development Hell

Development hell, the one place all filmmakers fear! But there are countless projects each year which never see the light of day. Here’s a few that somehow slipped off the radar…

HACK/SLASH

Todd Lincoln’s big screen adaptation of the cult graphic novel Hack/Slash has been trapped in development hell for some time now. Originally scheduled to have been filmed this year, Rogue‘s most promising project has remained dormant for some time now. Lincoln, who had previously been involved in a remake of The Fly which also ran aground, had received input from Tim Seeley, who had originally conceived the graphic novel back in 2004, and last year it seemed that things were going ahead. Such talent as Megan Fox and Michael Clarke Duncan had even been linked to the movie, but at present even the IMDb page lacks any information whatsoever.

SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT

Having already directed the excellent slasher Haute tension (aka High Tension/Switchblade Romance), French filmmaker Alexandre Aja moved over to Hollywood to helm a remake of the Wes Craven classic The Hills Have Eyes. Once filming on yet another ‘re-imagining,’ Mirrors, had been completed, Aja had been tipped to helm a new version of the notorious Christmas slasher Silent Night, Deadly Night for Screen Gems. Co-written by his long-time collaborator, Grégory Levasseur, the film had been set to co-star The Descent‘s Shauna Macdonald. But with Aja currently shooting Piranha for Dimension, it seems that this project is currently dead.

SLEEPAWAY CAMP BERSERK

With original director Robert Hiltzik making his own ‘official’ sequel with Return to Sleepaway Camp, Michael A. Simpson (who had previously directed the first two sequels back in the late eighties) had announced his own return to the franchise with Sleepaway Camp Berserk, which would see series antagonist Angela on death row due to the various murder sprees committed in the previous films. It’s been some time since any updates have surfaced online and the current status of the project is unknown.

MOTEL HELL

Having previously been developed by Twisted Pictures, whose success with the Saw franchise has made them hot property, the rights to Kevin Connor’s 1980 classic Motel Hell was eventually passed over to MGM, who had distributed the VHS back in the nineties. With Twisted Pictures unable to conjure up a script that were satisfied with, MGM had initially linked director Steven C. Miller to the project, which saw a brother and sister run a popular meat company which was harvested from the various strangers that had crossed their path. Another film which at this time seems to have gone ashtray.