‘Pumpkinhead’ to Receive the Reboot Treatment in 2017

Pumpkinhead is a film we truly love around these parts, it was the directorial debut of late makeup effects legend Stan Winston, and he gave us a truly stellar monster in the film. Since the release we have seen a slew of sequels, a few mainly from Syfy, but the franchise soon came to a halt in 2007.

Now it appears as if the film is set to receive the reboot treatment and we’re pretty stoked. According to Entertainment Weekly, Saw franchise executive producer Peter Block has acquired the rights to the Pumpkinhead franchise and he plans on rebooting the series in 2017.

Peter Block explains that the new film will have a lot in common with the original, but it will not be a scene-by-scene remake;

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.

One of the things we are worried about is that CGI is used quite heavily these days, but it’s refreshing to learn that Block is also looking to follow the lead of Winston and use as much practical effects as possible;

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.

At this time they are currently looking for a director, but ideally they want someone who understands the first movie and who loves the genre. Sounds promising? If anything, Peter Block has reassured us that the reboot is in the correct hands, so lets see how this plays out.