Books of Blood Filmmakers Talk Sequel Possibilities and Clive Barker Adaptations

Clive Barker stories have been the source of inspiration for horror movies for decades, resulting in projects like Hellraiser, Candyman, and Nightbreed, with the latest adaptation of the author being Books of Blood on Hulu. Barker personally collaborated with director Brannon Braga to not only bring an iconic story of the author’s to life, but also to craft all-new narratives for the endeavor, marking a unique and ambitious collaborative effort. With the project initially conceived as a TV series, both Braga and Barker are hoping this new film could kick off a series and they even have stories in mind they’d like to adapt for a follow-up endeavor.

“There are many stories in the ‘Books of Blood’ that I’m eager to do,” Braga shared with ComicBook.com. “There are two, in particular, one that I think can be done beautifully and, to me, is the scariest of the stories, which is, ‘Pig Blood Blues,’ and the other, which is almost impossible to film, which is a compliment to Clive Barker‘s uncanny writing, meaning you have to read it to understand how amazing it is, is ‘In the Hills, the Cities.’ I think a lot of filmmakers would love to take a crack, but I don’t know how it could be done properly, and we haven’t discussed it yet, but those are two.”

Barker pointed out that the story he has been hoping to bring to life comes with an eerie similarity to the pandemic the world is enduring.

“There’s also a story called, ‘The Life of Death,’ which is a story I’m very close to because it’s about the nursing of a medieval plague pit and, sorry to be … if this is in bad taste, but the fact is that plagues are in our head and our minds right now, plagues on our minds, big time. We’ve seen films taken from the sky of fields filled with graves, new graves. This is something that the medieval mind would have understood completely. And I had a friend whose job it was to get in those hazmat suits and go into newly opened plague pits, where there would be hundreds of hundreds of people who had just been thrown into pits because they had to get buried as quickly as possible.”

He continued, “And I thought, ‘Wow, there’s a story there.’ And this lady who I was teaching playwriting to, she was an amazing lady and I quizzed her about it. She gave me all the inside skinny, and I told her, I told ’em, I told Brannon at some point we got to do this. We got to go to England and tell this story. So that would be one that I’d love to see Brannon do.”

Given the number of Barker projects that have been brought to life over the years, some have been more successful than others, with Braga noting that one key component is to work with Barker himself on any such adaptation to ensure it aligns with his visions of terror if you want it to be a success.

“The key was to not just take Clive’s material separate from Clive because that’s not a good idea,” Braga detailed of the development process. “And I was so lucky and honored to sit in a room when we were coming up with the DNA of this picture, to work with Clive extensively and just have long creative discussions, weekly discussions, deciding what stories would be a part of this.”

Books of Blood is now streaming on Hulu.

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