Clive Barker comes home to Hellraiser
Much like The Babadook, we’ve long assumed Pinhead from Hellraiser to be queer like us. Just a vibe we got, really, but we believe our stanning is sound because the man who created him, Clive Barker, is also queer like us. And now Barker has signed on to participate in the production of an in-development HBO series starring our favorite elder monster. Hellraiser the series will explore the story of the Cenobites (former humans turned monsters) and will be written by Mark Verheiden (Battlestar Galactica, and he’ll also serve as showrunner) and Michael Dougherty (Trick r’ Treat), with David Gordon Green committed to directing early episodes. There’s no cast yet, and no release date set from HBO (everyone keeps saying 2021 but in reality it might be more like 2022), but it’s certainly something creepy and cool to look forward to. And with Barker now serving as an executive producer, we’re hopeful that it’ll all turn out as weird as we want it to be.
Kids in The Hall, no longer kids, back in the hall
You may worship at the altar of SCTV and currently get your laughs from Schitt’s Creek and Letterkenny, but never forget the legendary Kids in the Hall, Canada’s comedy lifeline to LGBTQ television audiences during the late 1980s and early ’90s. The trail blazed by Dave Foley, Mark McKinney, Scott Thompson, Kevin McDonald and Bruce McCulloch made queer comedy history, and now they’re back. Thirty-two years after the original series arrived on Canada’s CBC, the gang is returning for eight new episodes on Amazon Prime Video. Original producer Lorne Michaels will step back in, as well, and this will be the first new content from the sketch comedy team since 2010’s CBC limited series. And now a message to young people: this is your opportunity to go watch the original series and learn to respect the queenly majesty of Scott Thompson as Buddy Cole on a barstool making sexy jokes about Johnny Mathis. And while you’re at it go learn about Johnny Mathis, too.
Ellen Page is game for 1UP
Academy Award nominee Ellen Page (hope you didn’t forget about that Juno Best Actress nomination) and Paris Berelc (Hubie Halloween, Disney’s Lab Rats: Elite Force) are teaming up for 1UP, a gaming comedy feature film for BuzzFeed Studios. Berelc will play a gamer who quits her college e-sports team because of the misogyny of her male teammates, and then assembles an all-female team with the help of a gaming coach (Page) with some scandal in her past. Written by actor/writer Julia Yorks (Jack Reacher, The Adventures of Puss in Boots), and directed by Kyle Newman (Fanboys), it’ll be the second time Page has been associated with gaming: she was part of 2013’s Beyond: Two Souls, an interactive drama/Sony PlayStation game that also featured Willem Dafoe. And here you were thinking Inception was the strangest thing she’d done in her career.
Lady Bunny and Bianca Del Rio are Hateful Hags
“Enough with COVID and politics,” says legendary drag queen Lady Bunny. “It’s time for something really important… back-stabbing drag queens!” And while COVID and politics are sort of inescapable right now, she has a point, which is why she and queen Bianca Del Rio are launching HHN: Hateful Hags Network on Vimeo as we speak. The pair of hosts will bring audiences news from the drag world, roast other queens as often as possible, and then do a little musical number from time to time. Sounds simple enough, and that’s about all we have energy for at the moment anyway. And besides, if Trixie and Katya (and, obviously, RuPaul) have taught us anything, it’s that drag queens can slap together a show for 35 cents and make it werq. We’re ready for the wigs, the shade, and the reads. It’s the holidays, after all.