Home Entertainment Clive Barker's WEAVEWORLD is heading to TV

Clive Barker's WEAVEWORLD is heading to TV

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Horror fans should certainly be familiar with the name Clive Barker – he’s the creator of the Hellraiser movie franchise and it’s iconic antagonist Nick Pinhead. Now Deadline are reporting that one of the horror master’s earlier works, ‘Weaveworld’, is heading to the small screen.

Originally published in 1987, ‘Weaveworld’ is better characterised as a dark fantasy novel. Its basic premise is that a magical race known as The Seerkind created a secret world known as The Fugue, in the form of an ornate carpet, into which they wove both themselves and all they loved (hence Weaveworld) in order to protect them from both humans and a mysterious destructive force known as The Scourge.

Set in 1980’s Liverpool, the story then follows the granddaughter of the last living guardian of the carpet, Suzanna Parish, and the novel’s main protagonist Calhoun Mooney, who unwittingly stumbled onto the existence of The Fugue, as they protect the carpet from those who seek to unravel The Fugue and destroy The Seerkind – both in our “normal” world and within The Fugue itself.

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And depending on how you feel about the novel, this could now turn into one of those good news/bad news articles:

The series is being developed for The CW (home of shows such as Arrow, The Flash, Supernatural and The Vampire Diaries) where it’ll be written by Jack Kenny (Warehouse 13), who’ll also act as executive producer on the project alongside Clive Barker himself. According to Deadline the show will receive a “contemporary makeover” as, brace yourselves,

an app designer teams up with a young pastry chef who has just discovered that she is destined to be guardian of a mythological realm that can be accessed through a portal in an old Savannah mansion. Together, they fight an epic battle with evil forces who are vying for control of the magical world.

Oh boy. Deep breath. Another. Okay, that didn’t work. WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?! I can’t think of characters any less appealing than an app designer and a pastry chef. I’m getting visions of trendy Apple hipster foodie nonsense, with a side of young, model-attractive cast who’re “poor”; basically every negative The CW TV series trope you can imagine – just add a love triangle. No!

Yet at the same time the premise of the novel does fit really well with The CW’s current programming direction which is heavily skewed towards the fantastical and with, if we’re being honest, generally entertaining results in most cases – as the above-mentioned shows will attest to. So while I think the modernised characters sound ridiculous, we could end up with something worth watching – hopefully more The 100 and less Beauty & the Beast.

However when it comes to The CW one thing nobody disagrees with is that the shows are particularly controversial thematically, and that’s one area where the adaption might suffer as the novel has some religious aspects associated to it, with references to biblical characters, places and events – but with Barker on board it could touch on those too; and it’ll be interesting to see if it does because that’s something more associated with shows on the premium and streaming networks like HBO or Netflix.

Right now I’m not sure how I feel about this adaption. What do you think?

Last Updated: September 23, 2015

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