PROJECT DETAILS:

Despite what was said in the last update, production never occured like planned, but a recent rumor indicates that Paramount Players (Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin, Spell, Body Cam) are now behind the remake, with word that a script is finished and production is ramping up. At the moment this is just a rumor since nothing official has been released. (11/15/21)

Producer Peter Block (Saw franchise executive producer) purchased the rights to Pumpkinhead and is in search of a director with hopes to start shooting sometime in 2017 with a theatrical release sometime after. He had this to say about the current status of the project: "We’re just about to start going out looking for a director for it. [We need] somebody who really understands why the first one is terrific, the emotional beats of ‘Is the revenge you seek worse than whatever befell you in the first place?’ But it’s also somebody that wants to embrace what I think audiences really want these days — a really scary, fun thrill-ride. You get a lot of people who want to be in this genre because they see the commercial opportunities. I’m looking for a director who has a love for the genre and knows how to get those beats for the audience." (8/3/16)

On the topic of the original film, producer Peter Block was quoted saying: "Pumpkinhead is one of my favorite horror films of the late ’80s, early ’90s. Stan Winston sits on that Mount Rushmore of iconic filmmakers because of his creature designs, and that was his first directing effort. The creature’s great but the emotional story is wonderful as well. I got the rights to Pumpkinhead, and hooked up with a great young writer called Nate Atkins, and we developed our script, which is really solid." On what to expect from the remake he was quoted saying: “There is a similarity of theme and a similarity of story. There’s a lot of Easter eggs for people who know the original — iconic shots and iconic lines that we’re going to use. But we’ve enhanced the setting, and we’ve expanded the characters somewhat, to give it a different kind of experience.” And it looks like they'll stick with more practical effects, saying: "I am a big proponent of practical effects. That was the great thing about the original. A lot of the films I still respond to most today, it’s because of the practical effects. We think that it’s going to be a nice slow reveal, lots of scares and lots of action in the beginning, and a great creature in the end, which everybody should be able to look at and say, ‘Oh, that’s Pumpkinhead!’ It’s not like you’re all of a sudden going to find that it’s some amorphous, nebulous, CGI wispy thing. You’re going to know it came from the Pumpkinhead family lineage."

The original spawned a straight-to-DVD sequel and two SyFy channel movies.

This is a remake of the 1988 film with the same name from late makeup effects legend Stan Winston.