“Godzilla: King of the Monsters” and “Trick ‘r Treat” director Michael Dougherty has been set as helmer of a series adaptation of Clive Barker’s legendary urban fantasy tale “Nightbreed”.
Barker is out promoting Hulu’s upcoming adaptation of his “Books of Blood” works and revealed the news to Coming Soon. He says he’s currently writing ‘the bible’ for the series based on his 1988 novel “Cabal” which became the 1990 film “Nightbreed”.
The original film helmed by Barker himself followed unstable mental patient Aaron Boone (Craig Sheffer) who is falsely led to believe by his doctor (David Cronenberg) that he is a serial killer.
Tracked down by the police, his doctor, and his girlfriend Lori (Anne Bobby), Boone eventually finds refuge in an abandoned cemetery called Midian among a ‘tribe’ of monsters and outcasts known as the Nightbreed where they hide from humanity.
The project was a commercial and critical failure at the time but also a compromised film with Barker having to cut nearly an hour from the runtime which brought it down to 102 minutes. For years reels were lost as a legendary ‘Cabal Cut’ circulated until earlier this decade with a Shout! Factory restoration of a new Director’s Cut which cut out twenty minutes and added forty back in.
Josh Stolberg and Barker are penning the new version with James G. Robinson, David Robinson and Barbara Wall executive producing.